- An informational view of accession rarity and allele specificity in germplasm banks for management and conservation. Basically a better way of making cores.
- Multi-indicator sustainability assessment of global food systems. Thankfully includes both “Shannon Diversity of Food Supply” and “Food Production Diversity”. No sign of the Agrobiodiversity Index, though, alas.
- Cytoplasmic Diversity Studies in Sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.): A Review. Have the wild relatives to thank for it.
- Mosaic of Traditional and Modern Agriculture Systems for Enhancing Resilience. Refers specifically to rice irrigation systems, but could be generalizable, why not?
- Post-disaster agricultural transitions in Nepal. To cardamon, mainly.
- Simulating the Impacts of Climate Variability and Change on Crop Varietal Diversity in Mali (West-Africa) Using Agent-Based Modeling Approach. Less favourable and unstable climatic conditions lead to loss of diversity.
- Genetic Diversity in Argentine Andean Potatoes by Means of Functional Markers. There’s a small group of weird, interesting ones.
- Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) markers associated with high folate content in wild potato species. Ten-fold variation in content in in F2 population derived from cross between high folate diploid clone of wild Solanum boliviense and low/medium folate diploid S. tuberosum. Nice.
- Identification of new sources of resistance for pearl millet downy mildew disease under field conditions. 20 really good ones out of 101. Could have been worse.
- Assay of Genetic Architecture for Identification of Waterlogging Tolerant Pigeonpea Germplasm. 38 out of 128 survived. People are lucky this week.
- Phenotypic evaluation of a diversity panel selected from the world collection of sugarcane (Saccharum spp) and related grasses. Out of 300, 27 were higher than commercial standards in dry or fresh mass. On a roll here.
- Genotyping by Sequencing and Genome–Environment Associations in Wild Common Bean Predict Widespread Divergent Adaptation to Drought. Two genes identified. Let’s quit while we’re ahead. No, come on, let’s do another one.
- Tree genetic resources at risk in South America: A spatial threat assessment to prioritize populations for conservation. 7 of 80 socieconomically important trees threatened across their range. Damn.
Spatial data everywhere, but is that enough?
Last week saw something of a Big Spatial Data blitz, and not just Kofi Annan’s Nature piece in which he pithily set out why data — both big and small — is important:
Data gaps undermine our ability to target resources, develop policies and track accountability. Without good data, we’re flying blind. If you can’t see it, you can’t solve it.
The occasion for the aphorism was a monumental study in the same journal on “Mapping child growth failure in Africa between 2000 and 2015,” which plotted various child heath and education variables over the entire African continent at the unbelievable resolution of 5×5 kilometres. Interestingly, other spatial data, this time on agricultural production and nutrient diversity (which we have blogged about), was used to explain patterns in child growth stunting. There was also a call in the correspondence section of Nature to “democratise” smallholders’ access to such data.
But that wasn’t all.
A study in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics on “Food Abundance and Violent Conflict in Africa” used a huge spatial dataset of population, agricultural production and conflict locations. It found that, contrary to expectation, “[a]lthough droughts can lead to violence, such as in urban areas; this was found not to be the case for rural areas, where the majority of armed conflicts occurred where food crops were abundant. Food scarcity can actually have a pacifying effect.”
And, finally, there was “Winners and losers of national and global efforts to reconcile agricultural intensification and biodiversity conservation” in Global Change Biology. Unhelpfully titled, the more interesting finding of this study was that the “uneven spatial distribution of both yield gaps and [vertebrate] biodiversity provides opportunities for reconciling agricultural intensification and biodiversity conservation through spatially optimized intensification.”
Will all these pretty maps be used? I’ll just say that it’s probably too much to ask for “the powerful” to learn some GIS, but researchers could get better at helping them to bring together and explore disparate datasets such as these three in easy-to-use visualisations.
LATER: I forgot one: there’s also a new global dataset on evaporative stress index.
Brainfood: Lupinus diversity, African veggies, School food, Citrus collusion, Taro seeds, Hot seeds, Hunter-gatherers, Citrus phylogeny, Sheep management, Genebanks -> farmers
- Exploring the genetic and adaptive diversity of a pan-Mediterranean crop wild relative: narrow-leafed lupin. W-E migration.
- From lesser-known to super vegetables: the growing profile of African traditional leafy vegetables in promoting food security and wellness. I’m sold.
- Home-grown school feeding: promoting local production systems diversification through nutrition sensitive agriculture. Any traditional leafy greens, though?
- Citrus genebank collections: international collaboration opportunities between the US and Russia. Very complementary.
- Adapting clonally propagated crops to climatic changes: a global approach for taro (Colocasia esculenta (L.) Schott). The need for seed.
- High-temperature drying of seeds of wild Oryza species intended for long-term storage. The need for drying seeds at 45°C.
- Productivity, biodiversity, and pathogens influence the global hunter-gatherer population density. Come the zombie apocalypse, head for subtropical and temperate forest biomes.
- Genomics of the origin and evolution of Citrus. It all started when the SE foothills of the Himalayas got a bit dryer in the Miocene… But there’s only one genus (well, plus Poncirus), with 10 species. Oh and pummelos are really important.
- Sheep herding systems and animal genetic resource management in the Central Plateau region of Burkina Faso. The best strategy overall would be for rural breeders to specialize in maintaining purebreds and urban breeders, closer to markets, fattened F1 crossbreds. But that’s easier said than done.
- Access to genes: linkages between genebanks and farmers’ seed systems. You can do it in half a dozen different ways, but there are challenges with scale, sustainability and legal frameworks.
Examples of ABS wanted
As part of BGCI’s Darwin Initiative project with the Ethiopian Biodiversity Institute, BGCI is gathering practical examples of measures that ex situ collections, research institutions and their networks are taking to ensure that they acquire, use and transfer plant genetic resources and share benefits in compliance with national and international laws, respecting the rights of provider communities and in accordance with mutually agreed terms… BGCI seeks further examples of institutional and network ABS measures! Please send suggestions to abs@bgci.org.
No sign of the Seed Treaty’s ABS arrangements…
Brainfood: MSB value, Wild rice genomes, Media coverage, Ancient turkeys, Diverse covers, ABS & sequences, Red listing, Old crops, Wild pollinators, Rice breeding, Farm & dietary diversity, Forages positives, Kurdish sheep
- The conservation value of germplasm stored at the Millennium Seed Bank, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, UK. 10% of about 40,000 taxa, >8% of collections, are either extinct, rare or vulnerable at global and/or national level; 20% of taxa, representing 13% collections, are endemic at the country or territory scale. And the cost, though?
- Genomes of 13 domesticated and wild rice relatives highlight genetic conservation, turnover and innovation across the genus Oryza. Lots of things for breeders to play around with. Australians especially pleased.
- Our House Is Burning: Discrepancy in Climate Change vs. Biodiversity Coverage in the Media as Compared to Scientific Literature. Biodiversity conservation community really bad at getting the message out.
- Diversity of management strategies in Mesoamerican turkeys: archaeological, isotopic and genetic evidence. Separate domestications in Mesoamerica and SW USA; two types in former, one fed crops and the other, more flamboyant type, left to roam; neither eaten.
- Functional traits in cover crop mixtures: Biological nitrogen fixation and multifunctionality. Design mixtures with complementary plant traits for maximum on-farm benefit.
- Plant genetic resources for food and agriculture: opportunities and challenges emerging from the science and information technology revolution. The future is Norway.
- Quantifying progress toward a conservation assessment for all plants. A quarter done.
- The earliest occurrence of a newly described domesticate in Eastern North America: Adena/Hopewell communities and agricultural innovation. Erect knotweed used to be a crop, a mainstay of the Eastern Agricultural Complex. Now it’s a weed. Can the same be said of other plants? Well, maybe.
- Conserving honey bees does not help wildlife. Wild bees, that is.
- Breeding implications of drought stress under future climate for upland rice in Brazil. Wide adaptation of upland rice in Brazil is not going to cut it.
- Farm production diversity and dietary quality: linkages and measurement issues. Cash is often better than production diversity at predicting dietary diversity.
- Tropical forage legumes for environmental benefits: An overview. Ruminant livestock production need not be bad for the environment. Useful list of research needs to make sure.
- Complete mitogenomes from Kurdistani sheep: abundant centromeric nuclear copies representing diverse ancestors. There are lots of bits of mitochondrial DNA near the centromeres of all chromosomes bar the Y. Is that a problem for phylogenies?