- Researchers manipulate biodiversity to reduce the amount of alcohol in wine. For some reason.
- Promoting the cultivation of traditional Asian vegetables in the US. That’s more like it.
- Reproducing ancient malting. Now you’re talking.
- Giving African yam bean a helping hand. Faith in researchers duly restored.
Brainfood: Hemp microprop, Old dates, Central Asian double, Herding, Desert kite, Regeneration, Editing, Wild potato, Tomato landraces, Edible mycorrhizal fungi
- An In Vitro–Ex Vitro Micropropagation System for Hemp. Hope it doesn’t drive down diversity, man.
- The genomes of ancient date palms germinated from 2,000 y old seeds. Interesting, sure, but let’s not call it “resurrection genomics,” shall we?
- Interpreting Diachronic Size Variation in Prehistoric Central Asian Cereal Grains. Parallel increases in size among different lineages at the edge of distributions.
- The first comprehensive archaeobotanical analysis of prehistoric agriculture in Kyrgyzstan. The above in context. Both summer and winter crops grown.
- The influence of ancient herders on soil development at Luxmanda, Mbulu Plateau, Tanzania. 3000 year old encampments still have richer soils. They must have been hotbeds of domestication, surely. Did they have the same things in Central Asia?
- Mass-kill hunting and Late Quaternary ecology: New insights into the ‘desert kite’ phenomenon in Arabia. I bet they had these things in East Africa and Central Asia too.
- Eight generations of native seed cultivation reduces plant fitness relative to the wild progenitor population. Evolution comes at you fast.
- Attaining the promise of plant gene editing at scale. Factor in gene editing with RNA viruses and developmental regulators, and it will come at you faster still. And no, absolutely nothing will go wrong, you wuss.
- Making Hybrids with the Wild Potato Solanum jamesii. But why fiddle about with bridging species and stuff when you can edit?
- Tomato Landraces Are Competitive with Commercial Varieties in Terms of Tolerance to Plant Pathogens—A Case Study of Hungarian Gene Bank Accessions on Organic Farms. Who needs editing?
- Edible mycorrhizal fungi of the world: What is their role in forest sustainability, food security, biocultural conservation and climate change? 970 of them!
Brainfood: Wind, Strawberry breeding, Species concept, Apple domestication, Potato breeding, Organic cereals, Feed the Future, Kiribati diets, Mexican June, Armenia genebank, Maori kumara
- Global wind patterns shape genetic differentiation, asymmetric gene flow, and genetic diversity in trees. The wind is blowing the answer, my friend.
- Social network analysis of the genealogy of strawberry: retracing the wild roots of heirloom and modern cultivars. Some 1500 contributors to the current, quite diverse cultivated genepool, from numerous species.
- Is Domestication Speciation? The Implications of a Messy Domestication model in the Holocene. They could have used the above as an additional example. But the answer to the question in the title seems to be that it doesn’t matter much, and I’m there for that.
- Phenotypic divergence between the cultivated apple (Malus domestica) and its primary wild progenitor (Malus sieversii). Oh, look, you don’t need fancy genotyping to tell that wild and cultivated apples are different species. No word on the role of global wind patterns though.
- Genetic diversity and population structure of advanced clones selected over forty years by a potato breeding program in the USA. Going from 214 to 43 clones doesn’t seem a game worth the candle, but someone will no doubt set me right.
- The Adoption of Landraces of Durum Wheat in Sicilian Organic Cereal Farming Analysed Using a System Dynamics Approach. Follow the money.
- Rediscovering ‘Mexican June’: a nearly extinct landrace maize (Zea mays L.) variety. Yes, there is money in organic systems.
- Modeling impacts of faster productivity growth to inform the CGIAR initiative on Crops to End Hunger. Following the money.
- Nutritional diversity and community perceptions of health and importance of foods in Kiribati: a case study. Local foods are seen to be healthier than imported, but nobody cares. Maybe because people are following the money?
- Governing crop genetics in post-Soviet countries: lessons from the biodiversity hotspot Armenia. Any progress that has been made is due to committed individuals. There’s a lesson there for us all.
- Archaeological science meets Māori knowledge to model pre-Columbian sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas) dispersal to Polynesia’s southernmost habitable margins. Archaeology confirms traditional oral history. A lesson there too.
- Factors influencing household pulse consumption in India: A multilevel model analysis. Households that grown more pulses, eat more pulses. There endeth the lesson.
Nibbles: Seed morgues, African foods, GenRes, Agroecology, FarmGeek, ICRISAT
- In Praise of Seed Morgues. You heard me. Webinar next week: sounds like a doozy.
- Plan of Action on Forgotten Foods. Another webinar next week.
- Walk into the Gateway. The GenRes Gateway, that is, “a crowd-sourced platform to guide you through the landscape of forest, plant and animal genetic resources in Europe.” A third webinar. Looks like I’ll be busy next week.
- Maybe I’ll read about how to evaluate agroecology in the meantime.
- Agroecology is not on FarmGeek, but other interventions are, like GMOs and “genetic diversity” (ie cultivar mixtures) and you can explore how effective they are around the world.
- Speaking of genetic diversity, there’s a lot of it in ICRISAT’s pearl millet fields at the moment, though not in cultivar mixtures. And breeders are having a busy week of it.
Brainfood: Filbert genome, Weed evaluation, Cocoa bugs, Grass genes, Perennial ag, Forage quality, Forest gardens, Protected areas, Anthropocene, Pollinators, Neolithic burials, House mice
- The Corylus mandshurica genome provides insights into the evolution of Betulaceae genomes and hazelnut breeding. Yeah, but can it make Nutella better?
- Widely assumed phenotypic associations in Cannabis sativa lack a shared genetic basis. More work needed. Much more work.
- Dissecting industrial fermentations of fine flavour cocoa through metagenomic analysis. There’s a core of microorganisms in common even in very distant farms. Though I suspect the fun will be in the others.
- Widespread lateral gene transfer among grasses. Especially in rhizomatous species. That should relieve the anxiety about genetic modification, right? Right.
- An agroecological vision of perennial agriculture. Wait, what about those rhizomatous perennial grasses, though?
- Comparison of benchtop and handheld near‐infrared spectroscopy devices to determine forage nutritive value. The handheld devices are just fine. How long before Alice asks Chris for some for the ILRI genebank? To test on rhizomatous grasses, of course.
- Historical Indigenous Land-Use Explains Plant Functional Trait Diversity. Forest gardens in the Pacific NW still have more diversity 150 years after their indigenous managers were forced off them.
- The minimum land area requiring conservation attention to safeguard biodiversity. 44% of terrestrial area, home to 1.8 billion people. Presumably including a lot of indigenous managers.
- People have shaped most of terrestrial nature for at least 12,000 years. 75% of terrestrial area, in fact.
- Protection of honeybees and other pollinators: one global study. Focus on habitat loss and pesticides. And more monitoring.
- A sexual division of labour at the start of agriculture? A multi-proxy comparison through grave good stone tool technological and use-wear analysis. Guess which gender was buried with tools associated with interpersonal violence.
- Origins of house mice in ecological niches created by settled hunter-gatherers in the Levant 15,000 y ago. Well, hence the name, right?
- Commentary: Underestimating the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future. Don’t warn. Resist.