- African rice out of Africa, and out of the genebank.
- The other way around for sweet potato.
- Markers for micronutrients. And diversity for taste…
- The deep history of the ginkgo.
- Study plants to decrease the effects of burping.
- Brazil rationalizes peanut collections.
- Measuring moisture in seeds.
- Big data for better seeds. And not only in Iowa.
- NZ seeds in Svalbard.
- CATIE on Genesys.
- Oz biosecurity fail. Better stick to online.
- I want to be a seed rebel too.
- Maybe in Kazakhstan?
- Agave under the volcano under the cosh.
Smaller farms, more crop diversity, more nutrients, mainly
There’s a follow-up to that Environment Reports website on farm size and nutrient production that we blogged about a couple of weeks back. The data come mainly (though not exclusively) from a blockbuster inaugural Lancet Planetary Health article.
The new website explores farm size variation among different regions of the world through some great imagery. But it also highlights one aspect of the paper that I didn’t mention in the previous post: crop diversity on farm. Here’s the relevant figure (the paper’s figure 5), mapping how many different types of crops are produced in a pixel and how evenly these different types are distributed (the Shannon diversity index, H).
Here’s what the authors have to say about diversity and nutrient production (my emphasis).
…combining the diversity measures with spatially explicit plot sizes, which are highly correlated with farm size, shows that agricultural diversity (H) decreases as plot size increases (p<0·0001; appendix). In particular, areas with small and medium farms (≤50 ha) have larger diversity than do larger scale farms. These differences also translate into differences in nutrient production (figure 6). On a global level, areas with higher diversity of food commodities (higher H) produce more micronutrients than do areas with less diversity. This effect is particularly noticeable in places such as China, sub-Saharan Africa, east Asia Pacific, and west Asia and north Africa. In contrast with North America, in Europe, although production comes mostly from medium and large farms, it is not farm size, but the diversity of production that drives nutrient production in this region.
Brainfood: Cannabis roundup, Citrus genomes, Mapping Africa, Maize diversity, Qat diversity, Language diversity, Apple taste, Coconut diversity, Napier grass review, Rangeland management, Chinese goats, Arabica evaluation, Bangladeshi chickens, Seed endophytes
- Cannabis Domestication, Breeding History, Present-day Genetic Diversity, and Future Prospects. The weed is in trouble, man. Just one of the papers in a very special issue of Critical Reviews in Plant Sciences. And for a historical perspective…
- Genomic analyses of primitive, wild and cultivated citrus provide insights into asexual reproduction. Apomixis is down to a “miniature inverted-repeat transposable element insertion in the promoter region of CitRWP.”
- Automated cropland mapping of continental Africa using Google Earth Engine cloud computing. Croplands increased by 1 Mha/yr between 2003 and 2014.
- Genetic diversity and population structure of native maize populations in Latin America and the Caribbean. Three groups: Mexico + southern S. America, lowland Mesoamerica + Caribbean, Andes.
- Phylogeography of the wild and cultivated stimulant plant qat (Catha edulis, Celastraceae) in areas of historical cultivation. Centres of origin in Kenya and Ethiopia, with limited movement between the two, but some hybrids in N. Kenya; the Yemeni stuff came from Ethiopia.
- Process-based modelling shows how climate and demography shape language diversity. If you assume human groups split after reaching a certain population size, and rainfall limits population density, you can predict language diversity in Australia.
- Volatile Compound Profiles of Malus baccata and Malus prunifolia Wild Apple Fruit. Look at the esters.
- Genetic diversity, population structure and association analysis in coconut (Cocos nucifera L.) germplasm using SSR markers. I can’t see much new here. Please, coconut experts, tell me what I’m missing.
- Opportunities for Napier Grass (Pennisetum purpureum) Improvement Using Molecular Genetics. Could do better.
- Heterogeneity as the Basis for Rangeland Management. Gotta mix it up.
- Analysis of genetic diversity of Chinese dairy goats via microsatellite markers. The locally developed breeds are all derived from a single European breed.
- Variation in bean morphology and biochemical composition measured in different genetic groups of arabica coffee (Coffea arabica L.). You can’t use morphology to predict taste.
- Breeding for the improvement of indigenous chickens of Bangladesh: evaluation of performance of first generation of indigenous chicken. I don’t understand this much, but I liked the names of the genotypes: Naked Neck, Hilly and Non-descript Desi.
- Persistence of endophytic fungi in cultivars of Lolium perenne grown from seeds stored for 22 years. It’s a record!
Nibbles: Aeroponic yams, Ancient crops, Kumara, Informal food vendors, Foxy, Salumi, Corn whiskey, Doomed cassava
- Yams up in the air, but in a good way.
- Yet another couple of things on how “ancient crops” will save us all. All crops are ancient. Well, except the kiwi.
- Lovely little film on a lovely sweet-potato-growing New Zealand couple to make up for that uncalled-for dig at the kiwi. Made my day.
- Engage with kiosk holders, don’t hassle them.
- Review of a book on the quixotic attempt to resynthesize the dog. Why bother?
- More Italian salami than you can shake a stick at.
- Might go well with some artisanal Mexican corn whiskey.
- Cassava is “pointed in the direction of extinction.” Thank goodness for genebanks, eh?
Everything about size
Whizz-bang websites in support of data-dense papers seem to be all the rage.
Remember “Farming and the geography of nutrient production for human use: a transdisciplinary analysis,” published in the inaugural The Lancet Planetary Health a couple of weeks back? We included it in Brainfood, and linked to an article by Jess Fanzo which summarizes the main findings. This is probably the money quote:
Both small and large farms play important roles in ensuring we have enough food that is diverse and nutrient-rich. While industrialised agriculture suggests domination of food systems, smallholder farms play a substantial role in maintaining the genetic diversity of our food supply, which results in both benefits and risk reductions against nutritional deficiencies, ecosystem degradation, and climate change. Herrero and colleagues argue that if we want to ensure that the global food supply remains diverse and generates a rich array of nutrients for human health, farm landscapes must also be diverse and serve multiple purposes.
Well, there’s also a graphics-rich website now, “Small Farms: Stewards of Global Nutrition?” The infographic at the left here puts it in the proverbial nutshell (click to embiggen).
But what you really want to know is on what kinds of farms are grown those Canadian and Indian peas we talked about yesterday in connection with other fancy websites. Well, unfortunately, the data are only available for “pulses” here, but, perhaps unsurprisingly, those are grown mainly on large(ish) farms (blue) in North America, and small(ish) farms (orange) in South Asia. Each square is 1% of global production.
You can get similar breakdowns for different food groups (cereals, oils, etc.), and for a bunch of different nutrients: Calcium, Calories, Folate, Iron, Protein, Vitamin A, Vitamin B12, and Zinc. For all of these last you can also see global maps of nutritional yields, or “the number of people who can meet their nutritional needs from all of the crops, livestock, and fish grown in an area.” Here’s the one for Vitamin A.
Which I’m sure will be of use in targeting the promotion of homegardening, say, or the roll-out of things like orange sweet potatoes. There is Biofortification Priority Index already, but only at a fairly coarse, country level. As far as I know, anyway.
Of course, those countries could always import sweet potatoes…