Policy

February 1, 2017February 1, 2017

CGRFA16 in full swing

Ah, yes, the Commission on PGRFA is meeting in Rome, for the sixteenth time.

Status of Multilaterlal System (MLS) of the International Treaty for access and sharing of #seed material #CGRFA16 #ITPGRFA @FAOKnowledge pic.twitter.com/jtwaY6QuSl

— Francois Pythoud (@FrancoisPythoud) January 31, 2017

Correction: It’s of course the Commission on Genetic Resources for Food & Agriculture, not just plants, as my original “PGRFA” suggested. My mistake. Sheer force of habit to include that “P.” The remit of the Commission has long included “animal, forest, aquatic and microbe/invertebrate genetic resources for food and agriculture, and guides an additional global assessment on biodiversity for food and agriculture.” Thanks to Irene Hoffman for the correction. Apologies all round.

January 24, 2017January 25, 2017

Nibbles: Trees on farms, Biodiversity hotspots, Coconuts, Banana genebank, Fiddleheads, Hybrid wheat, Buckler prize, ITPGRFA hatchet job

Trees are good for African farmers.
A basic universal income for people in biodiversity hotspots. Agrobiodiversity hotspots too?
Coconut History 101.
30 years of bananas in Belgium.
Eat up all your fiddleheads.
Hybrid wheat is coming at last.
Ed Buckler wins big. Unclear if he’ll be allowed to tweet about it.
Nonsense piece on the ITPGRFA.

January 23, 2017January 18, 2017

Brainfood: Wild peanuts, Salt-tolerance, Melon diversity, Consumption & biodiversity, German veggie fanciers, Oh oh oomycetes, Miscanthus diversity, Urban pollinators, Milpa bees

Genomic characterisation of Arachis porphyrocalyx (Valls & C.E. Simpson, 2005) (Leguminosae): multiple origin of Arachis species with x=9. At least two distinct origins for the x=9 species.
Salt Tolerant Varieties: A Biological Intervention to Manage Saline and Sodic Environment and Sustain Livelihoods. Salt-tolerant rice and wheat varieties are being adopted where needed in this bit of Haryana, but not as much as they could be.
Genotyping-by-sequencing of a melon (Cucumis melo L.) germplasm collection from a secondary center of diversity highlights patterns of genetic variation and genomic features of different gene pools. Three subgroups, and that’s just in Puglia, the heel bit of Italy.
Quantifying biodiversity losses due to human consumption: a global-scale footprint analysis. Food consumption is the single greatest driver of biodiversity loss, somewhere else.
Old vegetable varieties: attitude, consumption behaviour and knowledge of German consumers. There’s a consumer segment in Germany that could be labelled “fanciers of old vegetable varieties,” apparently.
Emerging oomycete threats to plants and animals. Be afraid.
Ecological characteristics and in situ genetic associations for yield-component traits of wild Miscanthus from eastern Russia. Arctic sugarcane? It could happen.
The city as a refuge for insect pollinators. It could happen.
Sweat bees on hot chillies: provision of pollination services by native bees in traditional slash-and-burn agriculture in the Yucatán Peninsula of tropical Mexico. The milpa is pretty good refuge for bees already.

January 17, 2017January 16, 2017

Nibbles: Agroforestry info, Coffee genome, Citrus family tree, Physalis fossil, Conservation economics, Wild Vicia, African rice history, USDA PGR strategy, Fisheries, Evidence base

Agroforestry Species Switchboard gets upgrade.
Arabica sequenzzzzzzz…
“But what is the point of collecting and preserving this genetic diversity as seed, if it should remain in perpetuity in a seed bank?”
Citrus untangled.
52 million year old tomatillo fossil already had Inflated Calyx Syndrome.
Faba bean wild relative found, kinda sorta.
It’s the economics, stupid.
African rice in the New World. Mash up with peanuts?
National Program 301: Plant Genetic Resources, Genomics, and Genetic Improvement. Action Plan 2018-2022.
Communities that catch more diverse fish species are more resilient shock.
Database of what works in conservation. Not of crop and livestock diversity, though, alas.

January 10, 2017January 9, 2017

Brainfood: New communities, New journal, New sustainability indicators, New rice yields, New chickpeas, New tree map, Old barley, New wheat dataset, New oat “core”, New ABS guide, New threats

Mapping climatic mechanisms likely to favour the emergence of novel communities. New climate combinations are rare (3.4% of evaluated cells), but mean displacement moderately rapid (3.7 km per decade) and divergence high (>60° for 67% of cells). What will all this mean for CWR? As many are ruderals, maybe nothing?
Why biodiversity matters. Inaugural issue of Nature Ecology & Evolution. Not much on agricultural biodiversity, alas.
Bridging the practitioner-researcher divide: Indicators to track environmental, economic, and sociocultural sustainability of agricultural commodity production. Again, no surprise that biodiversity is hardly considered by either researchers or practitioners in monitoring sustainability, though that’s not the point of the paper.
Plausible rice yield losses under future climate warming. More even than IFPRI thought: −8.3 ± 1.4% per degree.
Recent breeding programs enhanced genetic diversity in both desi and kabuli varieties of chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.). But from a low baseline?
EU-Forest, a high-resolution tree occurrence dataset for Europe. Want European tree diversity, go to the Pyrenees.
Farmer fidelity in the Canary Islands revealed by ancient DNA from prehistoric seeds. New barley same as old barley.
Evaluation of 19,460 Wheat Accessions Conserved in the Indian National Genebank to Identify New Sources of Resistance to Rust and Spot Blotch Diseases. 45 accessions had known resistance genes against all three rusts as well as a QTL for spot blotch resistance.
Promoting the Use of Common Oat Genetic Resources through Diversity Analysis and Core Collection Construction. Interesting, but 21 out of 91 is hardly a core collection.
Utilization of genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge in academic research. A good practice guide for access and benefit-sharing. Well there’s no excuse now.
Identifying species threat hotspots from global supply chains. Global maps of which countries, and which commodities they consume, most endanger threatened species around the world.