- Genebank genomics bridges the gap between the conservation of crop diversity and plant breeding. What do we want? An accurate genotype-to-phenotype map for all seeds stored in the genebank. When do we want it? As soon as we have the money to ensure their conservation.
- The origins of cannabis smoking: Chemical residue evidence from the first millennium BCE in the Pamirs. Well, that’s like your opinion, man. Residues in incense burners used for mortuary rituals, if you must know.
- Patagonian berries as native food and medicine. Good, and good for you.
- Revisiting the Origin of the Octoploid Strawberry. Not 4 separate diploid progenitors, as another paper recently found, but rather 2 extant ones, once you re-do the math.
- The Nutritional Contribution of Potato Varietal Diversity in Andean Food Systems: a Case Study. It’s great, but it’s not enough.
- The origins and adaptation of European potatoes reconstructed from historical genomes. Sequencing of old herbarium specimens, including Darwin’s, shows that early introductions to Europe were from the Andes, and later admixed there with Chilean and wild material, forming a sort of secondary centre of diversity.
- Effect of Intensive Agriculture-Nutrition Education and Extension Program Adoption and Diffusion of Biofortified Crops. Breeding is not enough.
- Morphological characterisation and evaluation of cacao (Theobroma cacao L.) in Trinidad to facilitate utilisation of Trinitario cacao globally. Now we know which ones are the best, for different reasons.
- Evolution of US maize (Zea mays L.) root architectural and anatomical phenes over the past 100 years corresponds to increased tolerance of nitrogen stress. There has been unconscious selection for root traits resulting in better N use efficiency. An old paper, resurrected because of the next one.
- Breeding improves wheat productivity under contrasting agrochemical input levels. Breeding wheat in Europe for good performance under high input levels has not markedly affected its performance under more challenging conditions. Diversity has held up too.
- Positive outcomes between crop diversity and agricultural employment worldwide. Irrespective of input levels and economic growth rates.
- National food production stabilized by crop diversity. Crop diversity is not just good for rural employment (see above), but for year-on-year production stability too.
- Climate change and cultural resilience in late pre-Columbian Amazonia. And it was sort of the same in ancient Amazonia.
- Effects of Fairtrade on the livelihoods of poor rural workers. Fairtrade improves wages of workers in cooperatives, but not on small farms.
Nibbles: Tutwiler interview, Cherokee seeds, Cryo, Bordeaux rules, Oz maize, Food as medicine, In situ CWR
- Ann Tutwiler (ex Bioversity DG) on the importance of agrobiodiversity.
- Cherokee Nation may deposit seeds in Svalbard.
- Millionth sample deposited in USDA livestock genebank.
- New grape varieties to be allowed in Bordeaux because of climate change.
- Hawkesbury heritage maize regenerated.
- Some Filipino rice is medicinal.
- Germany designates first CWR genetic reserves in Europe.
Nibbles: Bean and chili diversity, European Neolithic, Microbiota Vault, Paški sir, Freeze dried potatoes, Rice art, ABS
- Collecting beans in the American SW.
- Chilis too.
- Updated map of Neolithic expansion in Europe.
- The Microbiota Vault is a thing.
- Wind-flavoured cheese.
- But is chuño worth saving, really?
- The art of rice diversity.
- Using Jerry Maguire to explain the Plant Treaty. It is not well done. But one is surprised to see it done at all.
Good-bye to all that Annex I?
The ninth meeting was held last week of the snappily titled Ad Hoc Open-ended Working Group to Enhance the Functioning of the Multilateral System of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. The indispensable Earth Negotiations Bulletin provides a summary of the results.
You’ll remember the Treaty has entrusted this working group with the task of looking for ways of increasing and speeding up the flow of money into the Benefit Sharing Fund. The meeting came up with a package of measures, comprising revisions of both the Standard Material Transfer Agreement used to distribute germplasm from the Multi-lateral System (MLS) and the list of plant genera included in the MLS (Annex I).
As far as the latter is concerned, there was agreement on a significant expansion:
Participants achieved an important breakthrough on Thursday night, with a tentative agreement on amending the list of crops in the MLS, currently in Annex I of the Treaty. While as usual in international negotiations, “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed,” Working Group participants expressed satisfaction with the well-balanced compromise: the MLS would cover all PGRFA under the management and control of parties and in the public domain that are found in ex situ conditions, while parties have the right to make reasoned declarations exempting a limited number of native species.
And as for the other side of the coin, it seems that there will be a move towards a subscription system, where a single up-front payment buys you access to the MLS for a specified period, while allowing the current pay-for-use system as an exception:
With agreement that the subscription system would be the main approach and single access would be the exception, the proposal to set a lower rate for the primary model and a much higher rate for exceptional single access to attract more users and hopefully more funds garnered significant interest.
Predictably, not everyone is entirely happy about how things have been going. But negotiations continue, with the final package to be discussed at the next meeting of the Governing Body of the Treaty in November.
Nibbles: Organic Greek, Mexican maize heirloom, Community seedbank, Arizona chilli, African maize, Chinese trifecta, Sex-changing solanum, Breeding oddities, Breeding costing tool, Chicken project, WFP, Cattle book, Agroforestry database, Minor cereals, Reviewing genebanks, Wheat breeding, Rice seeds
- Greek organic farm resists.
- Communities getting into seed banking all over.
- Saving zapalote chico.
- Would you like chiltepines with that?
- No zapalote chico in South Africa, but lots of other maize.
- Conserving agricultural biodiversity in China.
- Including in Hainan.
- At the same time, China restricts foreign access to human genome data.
- Sexually plastic Australian wild tomato named at long last.
- Breeding flavour crops.
- And figuring out how much it will cost.
- Interesting project on human-chicken interactions.
- Veggie breeder wins World Food Prize.
- New coffee table book on cattle in Africa.
- Flagship agroforestry database gets new version. Anyone wanna test it for us?
- Minor cereals in Europe are anything but minor.
- And lots are conserved in Europe’s increasingly scrutinized genebanks.
- Meanwhile, a major cereals keeps getting the attention it also needs.
- “The candidate markers could be used by any rice genebank to potentially identify varieties with seeds that are particularly short- or long-lived in storage. Viability monitoring intervals could then be customized by variety.” And wheat?