- The CATIE coffee collection gets a really close look.
- Pigeonpeas for Australia.
- Coloured wheat for India.
- Also in India, a rice institute opens its doors.
- A livestock genebank for Uganda.
- The coconut for the Caribbean.
- Why crop-based businesses should pay for crop conservation. Holding my breath…
- Hawaiians reclaim taro. Breathing again…
- How to use wild species sustainably.
- Diversity Assessment Tool for Agrobiodiversity and Resilience. Yeah, what we need is more software.
- 16th century beer. From Quito, the first city to brew beer in South America.
- Egyptians: I see that and raise you about 6 thousand years.
- You too can drink Leonardo’s wine. Wonder if he liked beer.
- Exploring for wild tomatoes.
- Liberating diversity.
- Agricultural R&D is in the top 3 value-for-money development interventions. Just saying…
- Seconded: “Multiplying the budget of CGIAR, the world’s largest global agricultural innovation network, would be a good start. And, in a time of great disruptions, we ought to prioritize Sustainable Development Goal 2.4, implementing resilient agricultural practices, with a greater focus on smallholder farmers in developing countries.” And 2.5!!!
Brainfood: Livestock cryo, Yeast evolution, PAs & CC, Genomes, Trifolium ambiguum, Earthworm map, Photosynthesis double, RCTs, Brown rice, DH maize, Breed performance maps
- Genetic Cryopreservation of Rare Breeds of Domesticated North American Livestock: Smithsonian & SVF Biodiversity Preservation Project. 106,109 “units of germplasm” from 39 breeds.
- Interspecific hybridization facilitates niche adaptation in beer yeast. Chimerization is not a word I thought I would ever see in a beer context. Anyway, thank goodness for feral yeasts and their propensity for miscegenation.
- Predicted climate shifts within terrestrial protected areas worldwide. PAs in temperate and northern high-latitude will have high area proportions of novel climate conditions by the end of the century.
- Crop Genomics Goes Beyond a Single Reference Genome. Looks like we’ll always need another genome.
- Morphometric approaches to promote the use of exotic germplasm for improved food security and resilience to climate change: A kura clover example. Fancy maths used to describe the hell out of a small collection of an underused clover.
- Global distribution of earthworm diversity. Peaks at higher latitudes, but higher overall in the tropics.
- Natural genetic variation in photosynthesis: an untapped resource to increase crop yield potential? Sounds like it.
- Increasing Photosynthesis: Unlikely Solution For World Food Problem. Ok, maybe not.
- What role should randomized control trials play in providing the evidence base for conservation? A bigger role that currently, but watch out.
- Brown Rice, a Diet Rich in Health Promoting Properties. Mill less.
- Loss of diversity and accumulation of genetic load in doubled-haploid lines from European maize landrace. DH not a panacea.
- Maize agro-food systems to ensure food and nutrition security in reference to the Sustainable Development Goals.
- Using phenotypic distribution models to predict livestock performance. Niche models + performance.
Nibbles: ISF & SDGs, Nutrition report, Plant blindness, Cowpea, Chefs, Ancient baking, Rotations, Blue maize, Forests & poverty, Food miles
- International Seed Federation secretary-general in podcast on seeds and the SDGs.
- Country nutrition profiles. Sobering.
- Share your plant stories on Herbaria 3.0.
- The secret history of the cowpea, from a chef: “Our peas were tiny little texts, and we didn’t even know it.”
- Speaking of chefs…
- More on that 4000-year-old baking yeast story.
- The economics of rotations.
- The economics of blue maize.
- Mapping the evidence base for the link between forests and poverty alleviation.
- Speaking of maps, here’s how food moves around the USA.
Subscription system in the balance
The last formal round of negotiations before the Governing Body meeting of the Plant Treaty in November hit a snag last week.
Will @planttreaty miss another opportunity to deliver a more functional #BenefitSharing in the plant sector ? Even if not perfect , let’s give the chance to the #seed sector to show its commitment to concretely contribute to #SDG target 2.5 @SeedFed @AgroBioDiverse https://t.co/zVoDAUqNDY
— Francois Pythoud (@FrancoisPythoud) October 28, 2019
Here’s hoping the spirit of compromise will pull us through at the last minute. The issues are important, and contentious 1.
Brainfood: Ecosystem services, Farmer Variety protection, Pineapple genome, Almond genome, Date palm genome, Sesame diversity, Frangmentation double, Alternative beans, AI & farmers, De-domestication
- Global modeling of nature’s contributions to people. Declining where the need is greatest. And that’s not even taking CWR into account.
- Farmer’s Varieties in India – Factors affecting their preferential prevalence and the current status of their legal protection. Open-pollinated crops are missing out.
- The bracteatus pineapple genome and domestication of clonally propagated crops. Domestication and early improvement as the result of a single clonal propagation event.
- Transposons played a major role in the diversification between the closely related almond and peach genomes: Results from the almond genome sequence. Including the sweet kernel phenotype.
- Genome-wide association mapping of date palm fruit traits. Fruit color and sugar composition changed in parallel.
- Genetic diversity and population structure of the Mediterranean sesame core collection with use of genome-wide SNPs developed by double digest RAD-Seq. Three genetic groups, but not geographically based.
- Ongoing accumulation of plant diversity through habitat connectivity in an 18-year experiment. You need those corridors.
- Meta‐analysis of the differential effects of habitat fragmentation and degradation on plant genetic diversity. You really do.
- In search of alternative proteins: unlocking the potential of underutilized tropical legumes. Beyond soybeans. I always liked Bambara groundnut.
- A scalable scheme to implement data-driven agriculture for small-scale farmers. Fancy maths put to some good use in Colombia. But what if it tells you to grow more coca?
- The evolution of crops that do not need us anymore. They’re called weeds.