- Agricultural diversification promotes multiple ecosystem services without compromising yield. Meta-meta-analysis shows diversification is good for biodiversity, pollination, pest control, nutrient cycling, soil fertility, and water regulation and not bad for crop yields either.
- Holocene land and sea‐trade routes explain complex patterns of pre‐Columbian crop dispersion. Cherimoya reached the Andes by boat.
- Safeguarding and using global banana diversity: a holistic approach. 1617 banana accessions from 38 countries maintained in an in vitro collection, backed-up in cryo; over 18,000 samples distributed to researchers and farmers in 113 countries in 35 years. And that’s just the basics.
- Designing sustainable pathways for the livestock sector: the example of Atsbi, Ethiopia and Bama, Burkina Faso. It’s not just a straight choice between intensive or extensive production, stop with the dichotomies.
- Moving health to the heart of agri-food policies; mitigating risk from our food systems. It’s difficult to separate food from health; and yet…
- Genes derived from ancient polyploidy have higher genetic diversity and are associated with domestication in Brassica rapa. Agriculture depends on polyploidy.
- Genetic diversity is indispensable for plant breeding to improve crops. Plant breeding from an industry perspective, using the Brassicaceae as a case study.
- Yield, yield stability and farmers’ preferences of evolutionary populations of bread wheat: A dynamic solution to climate change. A totally different perspective to the above, using a totally different crop. Compare and contrast.
- Enhancing seed conservation in rural communities of Guatemala by implementing the dry chain concept. Cool way for farmers to save their seeds so they can do the above.
- Landrace hotspots identification in Europe. Where to implement the above.
- Innovation and the commons: lessons from the governance of genetic resources in potato breeding. This is a tricky one. Near as I can figure it, the authors are trying to say that it’s difficult to govern genetic resources apart from the tools needed to develop and use them. But hey, you have a go.
- Conservation of Native Wild Ivory-White Olives from the MEDES Islands Natural Reserve to Maintain Virgin Olive Oil Diversity. I did not have an endemic insular wild albino olive on my bingo card.
- Agri-nutrition research: Revisiting the contribution of maize and wheat to human nutrition and health. Staple cereals are more nutritious than often thought.
- On the origin and dispersal of cultivated spinach (Spinacia oleracea L.). Spinach originated more eastward than often thought.
- What plant is that? Tests of automated image recognition apps for plant identification on plants from the British flora. Botanists shouldn’t give up their day jobs.
Nibbles: Wild potatoes, Nigerian ag troubles, Livestock power, Conflict, Wild rice
- Wild spuds to the rescue.
- Won’t be much use in NW Nigeria, alas.
- Livestock might, though.
- Wait wait wait…
- Ok, start again, how about wild rice in situ then?
On being ambitious for agrobiodiversity
The authors of “Set ambitious goals for biodiversity and sustainability” are not kidding around:
In response to the goals proposed in the draft post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) made public by the CBD, we urge negotiators to consider three points that are critical if the agreed goals are to stabilize or reverse nature’s decline. First, multiple goals are required because of nature’s complexity, with different facets—genes, populations, species, deep evolutionary history, ecosystems, and their contributions to people—having markedly different geographic distributions and responses to human drivers. Second, interlinkages among these facets mean that goals must be defined and developed holistically rather than in isolation, with potential to advance multiple goals simultaneously and minimize trade-offs between them. Third, only the highest level of ambition in setting each goal, and implementing all goals in an integrated manner, will give a realistic chance of stopping—and beginning to reverse—biodiversity loss by 2050.
What does “the highest level of ambition” mean for genetic diversity? Check out the handy table provided.
And there’s also a box listing the red lines for the ecosystem, species and genetic diversity goals. This last should:
- Include maintenance of genetic diversity—the raw material for evolutionary processes that support survival and adaptation; population size is not an adequate proxy for this.
- Be set at the highest ambition level (e.g., above 90% of genetic diversity maintained).
- Focus on populations and their adaptive capacity and include wild species and domesticated species and their wild relatives.
No word in this paper on how to measure whether that 90% figure is being met and maintained, for all species. That’s a whole other story, that some of the authors are actively working on. Fingers crossed.
Nibbles: CePaCT job, Banks, Business, Food System 2030, AnGR book
- Very cool genebank job going in Fiji.
- Banks should do more to support genebanks…
- …because it makes business sense.
- The German government is on board with Food System 2030.
- Nice book on the history of conservation of heritage livestock breeds.
Brainfood: Now what edition
- Image-Based Goat Breed Identification and Localization Using Deep Learning. Fancy maths can identify goat breeds from photos. Ok, cool, now what?
- AI Naturalists Might Hold the Key to Unlocking Biodiversity Data in Social Media Imagery. Fancy math can often identify common flowers on Flickr. Ok, cool, now what?
- FoodMine: Exploring Food Contents in Scientific Literature. Fancy maths can trawl the literature to pick out the chemical components of different foods. Ok, cool, I guess, now what?
- Cultural and linguistic diversities are underappreciated pillars of biodiversity. Well, yeah. But now what?
- Global priority areas for ecosystem restoration. Fancy maths says restoring 15% of converted lands in identified priority areas could avoid 60% of expected extinctions while sequestering 30% of the total CO2 increase in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution. Cool, now what?
- An unexpectedly large count of trees in the West African Sahara and Sahel. Wait, does that mean some of the above won’t be necessary?
- Cost and affordability of nutritious diets at retail prices: Evidence from 177 countries. Fancy maths shows that nutritious diets are almost 3 times as expensive as diets supplying basic energy needs, and costs increase with remoteness. Ok, cool, now what?
- Phylogenetic inference enables reconstruction of a long-overlooked outbreak of almond leaf scorch disease (Xylella fastidiosa) in Europe. The olive plague started on almonds. Ok, now what though?
- Genome-wide association study in accessions of the mini-core collection of mungbean (Vigna radiata) from the World Vegetable Gene Bank (Taiwan). Genotyping, phenotyping and fancy maths find that mungbean could grow in temperate conditions. Ok, cool, now what?
- Enhancing the searchability, breeding utility, and efficient management of germplasm accessions in the USDA−ARS rice collection. Genotyping and fancy maths can improve genebank management. Well, yeah, but now what? No, wait, we know exactly now what: digital genebanks!
- Ok, that was a bit of fun, but the important point is that research, no matter how cool, is only the beginning.