- Paying for the conservation of quinoa varieties.
- Not sure I’d pay for some of these potato photos.
- Would definitely pay for some of these botanical illustrations.
- Local food pays, just not necessarily in emissions.
- Why it pays to save wild apples despite the fact that they taste like crap.
Brainfood: Food systems & biodiversity, Tree diversity, Cereal micronutrients, African crops in America, Coffee vulnerability, Coffee fungus, Wildrice, Wild coriander, Wild apple genebank, Laperrine’s olive, Maize landraces, Goat domestication, Honey bee cryo
- Biodiversity Towards Sustainable Food Systems: Four Arguments. For the record: food/nutrition security, climate change resilience, sustainable diets, resilience to zoonoses. I would have added something about culture.
- Biodiversity–productivity relationships are key to nature-based climate solutions. Greenhouse gas mitigation helps tree diversity helps productivity helps greenhouse gas mitigation.
- Genetic determinants of micronutrient traits in graminaceous crops to combat hidden hunger. Big crops can help little crops.
- Contributions of African Crops to American Culture and Beyond: The Slave Trade and Other Journeys of Resilient Peoples and Crops. Decolonizing American agriculture.
- Vulnerability of coffee (Coffea spp.) genetic resources in the United States. Americans have a cunning plan for an African crop.
- Historical genomics reveals the evolutionary mechanisms behind multiple outbreaks of the host-specific coffee wilt pathogen Fusarium xylarioides. Coffee Wilt Disease fungus got a boost from banana Panama Disease fungus. Got a plan for this?
- Improved Remote Sensing Methods to Detect Northern Wild Rice (Zizania palustris L.). They’re this close to putting in place an early warning system. Coffee next? But what about those micronutrients, eh?
- Wild coriander: an untapped genetic resource for future coriander breeding. Not only untapped, its very existence was in doubt. Detect this from space, Colin!
- Advanced genebank management of genetic resources of European wild apple, Malus sylvestris, using genome-wide SNP array data. The Dutch field collection can be managed as a single unit. Kind of a relief, probably. Coffee next?
- Contrasting Genetic Footprints among Saharan Olive Populations: Potential Causes and Conservation Implications. Looks like the wild Saharan olive cannot be managed as a single unit. Bet they can be monitored from space though.
- Growing maize landraces in industrialized countries: from the search for seeds to the emergence of new practices and values. Two contrasting approaches by farmers’ associations in France and Italy.
- Herded and hunted goat genomes from the dawn of domestication in the Zagros Mountains. Before goats were morphologically domesticated, they were managed and genetically domesticated. I wonder if coffee was the same.
- Europe’s First Gene Bank for Honey Bees. Really cold drone semen finds a home in Germany.
Genetic diversity to get its place in the sun?
Great to see young guns Sean Hoban and Colin Khoury being interviewed by Emily Henderson on why genetic diversity is important and therefore why — and how — we should save it.
Their latest paper came out last month:
Hoban et al. (2021) Global commitments to conserving genetic diversity are now necessary and feasible. Bioscience doi: 10.1093/biosci/biab054. https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biab054
The bottom line?
There must be a CBD post-2020 framework with a clear, measurable, and numerical genetic diversity goal, of the same standing as species and ecosystems, as well as associated action targets…; inclusion and implementation of practical genetic diversity indicators in the CBD and other global biodiversity commitments (e.g., IPBES, SDG); and increased establishment and scaling up of genetic monitoring programs, with those actors having sufficient resources assisting others.
Seconded.
The future of genebanks…
…according to Ruaraidh Sackville Hamilton, lately the genebanks manager at IRRI, that is.
The webinar is tomorrow. But you can also read about his vision, if you’re all zoomed out.
He may or may not say something about cryopreservation. In any case, if you’re into that, there is, of course, another webinar, this one next week.
LATER: Actually he did mention cryo, but much else besides. And you can listen to the whole thing.
Brainfood: INCREASE, Bean geneflow, Potato geneflow, Rhodes Grass diversity, Tritordeum, Ivory Coast PGRFA access, Thai rice diversity, Local food, Indian rice breeding, Genetic diversity metric, Grapevine rootstocks
- Intelligent Characterization of Lentil Genetic Resources: Evolutionary History, Genetic Diversity of Germplasm, and the Need for Well-Represented Collections. Basically a set of protocols for producing, documenting and maintaining single-seed descended (SSD) pure lines. For beans too. Courtesy of the INCREASE project.
- Gene Flow in Phaseolus Beans and Its Role as a Plausible Driver of Ecological Fitness and Expansion of Cultigens. The diversity in the wild-weedy-crop complexes should be studied and conserved.
- Natural and Cultural Processes Influencing Gene Flow Among Wild (atoq papa), Weedy (araq papa and k’ipa papa), and Crop Potatoes in the Andean Region of Southern Peru. Indigenous communities seem to be doing just that for potatoes in the Andes.
- Genetic Diversity and Population Structure of a Rhodes Grass (Chloris gayana) Collection. From 104 accessions in the ILRI genebank to a core collection of 21 in 2 genetic clusters. No word on SSD.
- Tritordeum: Creating a New Crop Species—The Successful Use of Plant Genetic Resources. That would be Hordeum chilense x durum wheat. Quite the wild-weedy complex.
- Systems of Genetic Resources Exchange in Côte D’Ivoire and its Evolution: Case Study of Food Crops Such as Yam, Cassava, Rice and Plantain. Lots of material has come into the country from CGIAR centres, except for yams.
- Estimation of the Genetic Diversity and Population Structure of Thailand’s Rice Landraces Using SNP Markers. Two geographic subgroups within indica. No word on influx of material from CGIAR.
- The sustainability of “local” food: a review for policy-makers. Local food does not necessarily mean environmentally, socially or economically sustainable food. I guess that may go for genetic resources too (see above)?
- Rice breeding in India: eight decades of journey towards enhancing the genetic gain for yield, nutritional quality, and commodity value. QED.
- Global Commitments to Conserving and Monitoring Genetic Diversity Are Now Necessary and Feasible. Phew.
- Grapevine rootstocks affect growth-related scion phenotypes. It’s not just about the genetic diversity. But still.