- What I really need today is some Tibetan amdo milk tea. Very parky out.
- Failing that, these cartograms will keep me warm.
- This list of supposedly amazing agriculture maps is only meh, though. Needed more cartograms.
- Oh wait, there are other fermented options out there.
- ICIPE gets into Big Data.
- Toystory has some big data of his own. Worrying perhaps to think what he’s done to the diversity of the breed, but let’s not be churlish about his achievement. At least he wasn’t a Nazi.
- UK welcomes back some bees.
- There was a big UC Davis–Mars Symposium yesterday on “An exploration of scientific discovery, innovation and collaboration in food, agriculture and health.” Some of it was on Twitter.
- Roundup of crop wild relatives etc. research at US Davis.
Brainfood: Garden pollinators, Herbarium Analytics, Rice & nutrients, High altitude barley, Sunflower hybrids, Coconut pollen cryo, Evolution & dormancy, Evolution of C4, Maize landraces, Viruses
- Culturally valuable minority crops provide a succession of floral resources for flower visitors in traditional orchard gardens. Proper gardens better for pollinators than unmanaged plots.
- Trends in access of plant biodiversity data revealed by Google Analytics. No impact of social media on the use of plant data, and the future is mobiles.
- Worldwide Genetic Diversity for Mineral Element Concentrations in Rice Grain. Most, though not all, elements showed high heritability, which is good news for breeders.
- Agriculture facilitated permanent human occupation of the Tibetan Plateau after 3600 BP. No barley, no Tibetans.
- Seed fates in crop-wild hybrid sunflowers: crop allele and maternal effects. Having wild mothers helps wild-crop hybrids survive in the wild.
- Coconut (Cocos nucifera l.) pollen cryopreservation. Eureka!
- The evolution of seed dormancy: environmental cues, evolutionary hubs, and diversification of the seed plants. More dormancy, more speciation.
- The evolutionary ecology of C4 plants. C4 opens new niches, but it’s all a matter of contingency and you have to follow the whole evolutionary history of a group to understand its current ecological strategy.
- A Minor Role for Environmental Adaptation in Local–Scale Maize Landrace Distribution: Results from a Common Garden Experiment in Oaxaca, Mexico. It’s the social factors, stupid.
- Crop immunity against viruses: outcomes and future challenges. PAMP (pathogen-associated molecular patterns)-triggered immunity (PTI) may be the future.
Brainfood: Filipino rice synonyms, Jatropha breeding, Polish oats, Amazonian peppers, Wild lentils, Indian pigeonpea, Russian peas, Pulse markers, Wild pollinators, Phenotyping platforms, Almonds & peaches, Cerrado roads, Arboreta conservation
- Multiplex SSR-PCR analysis of genetic diversity and redundancy in the Philippine rice (Oryza sativa L.) germplasm collection. 427 rice accessions in the national collection with similar names resolve to about 30 unique profiles. I think. The abstract is a little hard to follow, and that’s all I have access to.
- Quantitative genetic parameters of agronomic and quality traits in a global germplasm collection reveal excellent breeding perspectives for Jatropha curcas L. 375 genotypes, 7 locations and 3 years get you quite enough data to plan a decent breeding programme.
- Studies on genetic variation within old Polish cultivars of common oat. Forward into the past.
- Morphoagronomic peppers no gender pungent Capsicum spp. Amazonia. Actually nothing to do with gender. That’s a mis-translation of “genus,” if you can believe it. Paper basically says that Amazonian peppers are really variable, which is not as interesting as it might have been.
- Global Wild Annual Lens Collection: A Potential Resource for Lentil Genetic Base Broadening and Yield Enhancement. The core collection of wild annuals (which is actually a somewhat novel concept) comes mainly from Turkey and Syria, and it’s got diversity that’s not in the cultigen.
- Pigeon pea Genetic Resources and Its Utilization in India, Current Status and Future Prospects. Indian genebank evaluates the ICRISAT core and mini-core. Then does some mutation breeding :)
- Molecular genetic diversity of the pea (Pisum sativum L.) from the Vavilov Research Institute collection detected by the AFLP analysis. Molecular data does not correspond with subspecies nor ecogeographic groupings. Back to the drawing board.
- Characterization of microsatellite markers, their transferability to orphan legumes and use in determination of genetic diversity among chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) cultivars. Chickpea SSRs are ok for other, less studied, crops too.
- From research to action: enhancing crop yield through wild pollinators. Go wild.
- Integration of phenotyping and genetic platforms for a better understanding of wheat performance under drought. You really need managed environment facilities. Didn’t a paper in Brainfood last week say what you needed was a network of field sites? I guess you need both.
- Wild almonds gone wild: revisiting Darwin’s statement on the origin of peaches. He was not entirely wrong.
- The role of roadsides in conserving Cerrado plant diversity. 70% of species is not bad, I guess. No word on whether that includes wild peanuts, but I suspect yes.
- Do living ex situ collections capture the genetic variation of wild populations? A molecular analysis of two relict tree species, Zelkova abelica and Zelkova carpinifolia. Yes and no. But this is in botanic gardens and arboreta, what about seedbanks? The cerrado people want to know…
Brainfood: Dryland protected areas, Breeding olives, Tomato cryo, Bacterial diversity, Beta diversity, Old hops, Wild strawberries, Sea bass genome, Forest management, Sorghum biomass
- The role of protected areas in supplying ten critical ecosystem services in drylands: a review. Let the communities take the lead, be inventive about governance.
- Breeding Oil and Table Olives for Mechanical Harvesting in Spain. 19,000 seedlings, 481 preselections in intermediate field trials, 31 advanced selections in a network of field trials, 1 new protected cultivar Sikitita (Chiquitita in USA).
- Phenotypic and molecular characterization of plants regenerated from non-cryopreserved and cryopreserved wild Solanum lycopersicum Mill. seeds. Oops, SSRs pick up some changes.
- Pollen Cryopreservation to Support Maintenance of a Wild Species Collection of the Genus Allium. Variable success. And no word on somaclonal variation.
- Epiphytic bacteria biodiversity in Brazilian Cerrado fruit and their cellulolytic activity potential. No fewer than 29 bacterial genera on 32 native fruits, 30% producing cellulase.
- Fine-scale spatial genetic structure of common and declining bumble bees across an agricultural landscape. Not much structure, due to queen dispersal. Declining species less diverse.
- Genetic Diversity in Remnant Swedish Hop (Humulus lupulus L.) Yards from the 15th to 18th Century. The old varieties are still there, having gone feral in abandoned yards because, unlike for 450 years until 1860, Swedish farmers are, alas, no longer obliged to grow the stuff.
- A comparison of wild and cultivated strawberries for nitrogen uptake and reduction. Some wild accessions might be better at assimilating N.
- Advances in European sea bass genomics and future perspectives. There’s a sequenced genome, but nobody’s using it.
- Genetic effects of forest management practices: Global synthesis and perspectives. There’s no excuse for not doing the right thing now.
- Exploring the variability of a photoperiod-insensitive sorghum genetic panel for stem composition and related traits in temperate environments. You can improve biomass quantity and quality simultaneously. Stem composition variability follows genetic origin.
Brainfood: Azeri grapes, Biodiversity & ecoservices, Ivorian melons, Omani chickens, Insecticides & pollinators, Czech wild wheat, African yams, Livestock breeding, Natural selection, Bean proteins
- Biodiversity and breeding of grapes: a study in Azerbaijan. Long history, 2 main wild types, 600 cultivated varieties, 100 of them threatened.
- Linkages between biodiversity attributes and ecosystem services: A systematic review. Mainly, but not exclusively, positive. Always complicated.
- Genetic relationships among accessions of African indigenous melons (Cucumis melo L. ssp. agrestis) using AFLP markers. Vegetable and soup thickener types separate genetically.
- From India to Africa across Arabia: An mtDNA assessment of the origins and dispersal of chicken around the Indian Ocean Rim. Arabian chickens come from India, Somali chickens from SE Asia.
- A restatement of the natural science evidence base concerning neonicotinoid insecticides and insect pollinators.. Here’s the data. Make up your own mind.
- Aegilops conservation and collection evaluation in the Czech Republic. 1 species in situ, 21 ex situ.
- Next-generation sequencing based genotyping, cytometry and phenotyping for understanding diversity and evolution of guinea yams. Both wild and cultivated species form distinct groups, except for Dioscorea rotundata, which is a mishmash of stuff.
- Issues and concerns in smallholder livestock genetic improvement programs in Africa. Got to select for multiple uses under less-than-ideal conditions. Not easy.
- Exploring natural selection to guide breeding for agriculture. Survival in the wild is not the same as performance in a cultivated field, but understanding the basis of adaptation can still help in breeding.
- Evaluating Two-Dimensional Electrophoresis Profiles of the Protein Phaseolin as Markers of Genetic Differentiation and Seed Protein Quality in Common Bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.). Back to the future. Who needs DNA when you have proteins.