- Medium-term seed storage of diverse genera of forage grasses, evidence-based genebank monitoring intervals, and regeneration standards. One size does not fit all.
- Sustainability gridlock in a global agricultural commodity chain: Reframing the soy–meat food system. Divide and conquer.
- Farm establishment, abandonment and agricultural practices during the last 1,300 years: a case study from southern Sweden based on pollen records and the LOVE model. Medieval Swedes got high.
- A review of breeding objectives, genomic resources, and marker-assisted methods in common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.). Oh dear, a worldwide catalogue of germplasm needed.
- Construction of genetic linkage map and genome dissection of domestication-related traits of moth bean (Vigna aconitifolia), a legume crop of arid areas. No word on whether a catalogue is needed.
- Resources and opportunities for re-establishing Lathyrus cicera L. as a multipurpose cultivated plant. I’d try it. But do a catalogue first.
- Ex situ seed banks and the IUCN Red List. When is extinct not extinct?
- Convergent seed color adaptation during repeated domestication of an ancient new world grain. Grain amaranth selected 3 times independently from same wild precursor, but always for the same colour.
- Modeling epidemics in seed systems and landscapes to guide management strategies: The case of sweetpotato in Northern Uganda. Spread of disease depends on where it starts. Watch out for places with lots of out-nodes.
- A Molecular View of Plant Local Adaptation: Incorporating Stress-Response Networks. Adaptation here does not necessarily mean no adaptation there. Interesting for breeders?
- Using social norms to encourage healthier eating. To get kids to eat broccoli, tell them their favourite youtuber does. Probably generalizable.
- Nutrition Transition and the Structure of Global Food Demand. Lower growth in overall food demand than in the past, but a doubling of demand for animal calories.
- Grass pea (Lathyrus sativus L.): orphan crop, nutraceutical or just plain food? Needs to shed its bad image.
- Origin and evolution of the octoploid strawberry genome. All four parents tracked down.
Nibbles: Food biodiversity, Crowdsourcing seeds, A2S, Women & seeds, Cowpea breeding, Heirlooms vs GM, Green Revolution revisionism, Plant health book, ICRISAT genebank, Chinese national genebank, Tea research, Paper mulberry genome, Grape map, Italian olive apocalypse
- Chefs innovating with biodiversity.
- Citizen seed science comes of age.
- Which is just as well, because seed companies could be doing a better job.
- Though women are trying.
- Hang on there, the private sector set to rescue the cowpea.
- A tale of two paradigms.
- But is one of the paradigms in trouble?
- 50 years of plant health research in Africa.
- Greening the genebanks.
- But how green is “China’s Noah’s Ark“?
- And does it have any tea?
- Fortunately, the paper mulberry’s genome is consistent with Chinese philosophy.
- Italy’s vineyards get mapped.
- It may be too late for Italy’s olives though.
Nibbles: Homeric food, Two atlases, Cacao breeding, Smart foods, Lancet/EAT, Wild grapes, Landrace maize, Training breeders, Apios, Sustainable use, Cost of nutrition
- Did Homeric heroes eat a lot of meat? The answer will surprise you. A thread.
- Social food atlas to be launched.
- Atlas of West African food systems already launched. Very different thing.
- Saving chocolate through biotech.
- What makes foods smart?
- Pros and cons of the Lancet/EAT thing. And more.
- Waking up the wine industry to the beauty grapevine wild relatives.
- The magos of maize, from Mexico to the US, and back again.
- Plant breeding training in Africa.
- Pre-colonial North America: not wilderness, not dense forest, and not just the Three Sisters, lots of Apios too. Lots.
- Food AND biodiversity.
- Nutritious OR affordable.
Brainfood: Improvement recapitulates domestication, Functional variation, Intensification, Gender & nutrition, Collaboration double, Losses, AgRenSeq , Crocus domestication, Saffron evolution, Mascarene CWR, Mexican CWR, ABS, Sweet cocoa, Tasty fruits, Baobab diversity
- How can developmental biology help feed a growing population? By figuring out how domestication hacked developmental processes.
- Distinct characteristics of genes associated with phenome-wide variation in maize (Zea mays). Analyzing a lot of traits at a time identifies a different set of phenotypically causal genes than more conventional single-trait approaches. What it all means in practice I have no idea, you tell me.
- Sunflower pan-genome analysis shows that hybridization altered gene content and disease resistance. Not only is one trait not enough, one genome is not enough.
- Agriculturally productive yet biodiverse: human benefits and conservation values along a forest-agriculture gradient in Southern Ethiopia. Depends what you mean by productive.
- Does providing agricultural and nutrition information to both men and women improve household food security? Evidence from Malawi. Yes.
- Principles of effective collaboration in agricultural development and research for impact. Learn from the birds.
- Opening the dialogue: Research networks between high‐ and low‐income countries further understanding of global agro‐climatic challenges. See above. Maybe.
- The global burden of pathogens and pests on major food crops. About 20%. We talked about this…
- Resistance gene cloning from a wild crop relative by sequence capture and association genetics. A new way to reduce the above, using crop wild relatives.
- Adding color to a century‐old enigma: multi‐color chromosome identification unravels the autotriploid nature of saffron (Crocus sativus) as a hybrid of wild Crocus cartwrightianus cytotypes. Which means you can now re-synthesize it.
- Crop wild relative diversity and conservation planning in two isolated oceanic islands of a biodiversity hotspot (Mauritius and Rodrigues). Basically coffee.
- Diversity and conservation priorities of crop wild relatives in Mexico. Over 300 species, but not coffee.
- Benefit sharing mechanisms for agricultural genetic diversity use and on-farm conservation. Profit-sharing is better for conservation than technology transfer.
- Are Cocoa Farmers in Trinidad Happy? Exploring Factors Affecting their Happiness. Well, those whose main crop was not cacao are happier, which must say something.
- Edible fruits from Brazilian biodiversity: A review on their sensorial characteristics versus bioactivity as tool to select research. Eat Anacardium occidentale, Passiflora edulis and Acrocomia aculeata to be happiest. Seems very unadventurous, though.
- Genetic differentiation in leaf phenology among natural populations of Adansonia digitata L. follows climatic clines. Anyone going to do this for all those Brazilian fruits?
Brainfood: Gene mining, Using genebanks, Wild tomato hybrids, Domestication genes, Intensification, Cicer photoperiod, China ABS, Hybridization, Conservation vs livelihoods, Flax evolution, Clean cassava
- Seeing nature as a ‘universal store of genes’: How biological diversity became ‘genetic resources’, 1890–1940. “Beyond the space-time of Neo-mendelian and Morganian laboratory genetics, genes became understood though a geographical gaze at a planetary scale.”
- Harnessing the potential of germplasm collections. Start with diverse germplasm, then edit in domestication genes.
- Spatial proximity determines post-speciation introgression in Solanum. But said introgression is not that important, in the grand evolutionary scheme of things, at least for these wild tomatoes.
- Understanding Grass Domestication through Maize Mutants. It’s not straightforward, because domestication genes work differently in maize, because of differences in regulation.
- May innovation on plant varieties share agricultural land with nature, or spare land for it? It may do both, under certain conditions. If I understand the economics jargon correctly.
- Photoperiod Response of Annual Wild Cicer Species and Cultivated Chickpea on Phenology, Growth, and Yield Traits. They need 15-18h to flower.
- China’s Legal Issues in the Access and Benefit-sharing of the Genetic Resources. …need addressing urgently.
- Insights from genomes into the evolutionary importance and prevalence of hybridization in nature. It’s everywhere, but whether it’s adaptive is hard to prove. One crop example: common bean.
- Incorporating basic needs to reconcile poverty and ecosystem services. Complicated but workable methodology to identify the win-win solution space.
- Flax latitudinal adaptation at LuTFL1 altered architecture and promoted fiber production. Flax became a fibre crop when it was carried north into Europe as a result of adaptation to higher latitudes, including by introgression from local wild species.
- A method for generating virus-free cassava plants to combat viral disease epidemics in Africa. Chemo- and thermotherapy in tissue culture.