- Mapping climatic mechanisms likely to favour the emergence of novel communities. New climate combinations are rare (3.4% of evaluated cells), but mean displacement moderately rapid (3.7 km per decade) and divergence high (>60° for 67% of cells). What will all this mean for CWR? As many are ruderals, maybe nothing?
- Why biodiversity matters. Inaugural issue of Nature Ecology & Evolution. Not much on agricultural biodiversity, alas.
- Bridging the practitioner-researcher divide: Indicators to track environmental, economic, and sociocultural sustainability of agricultural commodity production. Again, no surprise that biodiversity is hardly considered by either researchers or practitioners in monitoring sustainability, though that’s not the point of the paper.
- Plausible rice yield losses under future climate warming. More even than IFPRI thought: −8.3 ± 1.4% per degree.
- Recent breeding programs enhanced genetic diversity in both desi and kabuli varieties of chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.). But from a low baseline?
- EU-Forest, a high-resolution tree occurrence dataset for Europe. Want European tree diversity, go to the Pyrenees.
- Farmer fidelity in the Canary Islands revealed by ancient DNA from prehistoric seeds. New barley same as old barley.
- Evaluation of 19,460 Wheat Accessions Conserved in the Indian National Genebank to Identify New Sources of Resistance to Rust and Spot Blotch Diseases. 45 accessions had known resistance genes against all three rusts as well as a QTL for spot blotch resistance.
- Promoting the Use of Common Oat Genetic Resources through Diversity Analysis and Core Collection Construction. Interesting, but 21 out of 91 is hardly a core collection.
- Utilization of genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge in academic research. A good practice guide for access and benefit-sharing. Well there’s no excuse now.
- Identifying species threat hotspots from global supply chains. Global maps of which countries, and which commodities they consume, most endanger threatened species around the world.
Nibbles: Catching up edition
- And we’re back.
- India wants to set up a fish genebank. Because climate change, which is scrambling up climates everywhere. And fish are important, so don’t scoff.
- Nepal’s community seed banks in the news. Also Brazil’s. And New Zealand’s, since we’re at it.
- Don’t forget India’s. And not just the community sort, either.
- Our friends at Kew on the wonders of genebanks.
- Someone mention genebanks? Latest photos from Ft Collins.
- You can make your own. Genebank, that is.
- Podcast on a really long-term seed viability experiment.
- It’s not just about the genebanks, though. Or all that biotechnology for that matter. Indeed not, as iPES-Food reminds us.
- Italian monks help rebuild earthquake-hit town. With beer.
- French monks are at it too. Beer, that is.
- Go ahead, have that piece of cheese with that monk-brewed beer.
- Or with a nice IPA for that matter.
- Or a banana beer.
- Sure, take all the romance out of beer, why don’t you.
- The Mesoamerican, entomological roots of the colour scarlet.
- Don’t keep people out if you want to protect forests. I can’t understand why this still needs to be said.
- The story of the quest for super-sweet corn. And a celebration of the life of a giant of corn (as in maize) research.
- And for the “ultimate” avocado.
- How about ultimate dope?
- The traditional, end-of-year, save-the-apple and the-end-of-frankincense stories. Actually there were two on apples. And it’s not all bad news for frankincense.
- Saving the Tamworth pig in Australia. And the camel in Rajasthan.
- Cool map of French traditional foods.
- For your next Saturnalia feast.
- The Met has a “corne field.”
- Earliest evidence of potatoes from the central Andes. What, not Canada?
- Neolithic hunter-gatherers of the Libyan Sahara liked their veggies. Which we all should. But not at these prices. Ah, wait, though, is the melon a vegetable, or a fruit?
- Some crops come, some go.
- Which seems a good place to bring this first, gigantic Nibble of 2017 to a close. Did you miss us? I know you did. But did we miss anything over the holidays? Let us know.
Brainfood: Rucola, PGR history, Camels & CC, Quality seed, Co-evolution, Dormancy
- Changes in rocket salad phytochemicals within the commercial supply chain: Glucosinolates, isothiocyanates, amino acids and bacterial load increase significantly after processing. Sitting around is good for rucola’s nutritional value.
- From “Genetic Resources” to “Ecosystems Services”: A Century of Science and Global Policies for Crop Diversity Conservation. Not just stuff to mine.
- Camels and Climate Resilience: Adaptation in Northern Kenya. Increasing focus on camel herding a reasonable climate resilience strategy, but only under some scenarios, for some communities. And what is it doing to diversity?
- A review of factors that influence the production of quality seed for long-term conservation in genebanks. What’s best for commercial seed production is not necessarily best for long-term conservation. Though it won’t hurt.
- The eco-evolutionary impacts of domestication and agricultural practices on wild species. Agriculture (plant breeding, agricultural practices and gene flow with crops) can have evolutionary consequences for wild species that undermine the success of agriculture.
- Multiple alleles at a single locus control seed dormancy in Swedish Arabidopsis. Careful with that GWAS!
Nibbles: Reindeer, Olives, Seeds
- Donner and Blitzen — reindeer domestication
- Crop wild relative to the rescue, eventually, maybe. Wild olives uninfected by Xylella.
- Open source seeds, a roundup.
Indications of lack of progress on agrobiodiversity indicators
Over at the work blog, I’m busy jumping on the biodiversity mainstreaming bandwagon, but I wrote that piece before news came out this morning from the Convention on Biological Diversity meeting in Cancun of the disappointing lack of progress around the world in meeting the Aichi Targets.
You remember the Aichi Targets, don’t you? We’re supposed to be doing a lot of good things for biodiversity by 2020, including, in Target 13, for agro-biodiversity:
the genetic diversity of cultivated plants and farmed and domesticated animals and of wild relatives, including other socio-economically as well as culturally valuable species, is maintained, and strategies have been developed and implemented for minimizing genetic erosion and safeguarding their genetic diversity.
Here’s how we’re getting on, according to the just-published assessment. Spoiler alert: not very well. Green means “On track to meet or exceed the Aichi Target,” orange is “Progress to achieve the Aichi Target but at insufficient rate,” and red denotes “No progress, or a decline against the Aichi Target.” And remember that not all national targets are necessarily well aligned with the Aichi targets, for Target 13 75% being less ambitious or poorly aligned.
The assessment summarizes how countries say they’re doing. Or rather, how the CBD interprets how countries say they’re doing, in meeting the different targets:
101 parties submitted their National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plans (NBSAPs) and 5th National Reports between 2011 and 2016. As of July 2016, 5th National Reports have been submitted by 90% of the Parties, and NBSAPs by 52%. These were collated, analysed and scored by the CBD Secretariat (SCBD).
Here’s the raw data, if you’re interested. How does Venezuela, say, know that it is “on track to achieve” Target 13? There are lots of possible indicators out there. The CBD itself suggested a couple early on in its “quick guide” to Target 13:
• Trends in genetic diversity of cultivated plants, and farmed and domesticated animals and their wild relatives
• Trends in genetic diversity of selected species
• Trends in number of effective policy mechanisms implemented to reduce genetic erosion and safeguard genetic diversity related to plant and animal genetic resources
And a little later, in 2016, in the 5th edition of the Global Biodiversity Outlook, National Reporting and Indicators for Assessing Progress towards the Aichi Biodiversity Targets (UNEP/CBD/SBSTTA/20/13), it came up with this little lot (click to read better):
Note that a couple of indicators (number of accessions in genebanks, number of livestock breeds at risk) are also being proposed for SDG Target 2.5, which echoes the wording of Aichi 13. Note also that, as we blogged about yesterday, some progress is being made on the indicator on Red Listing crop wild relatives. And finally, the Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture did come up with a very thorough assessment of global plans of action for plant genetic resources earlier this year.
But it’s not over, not by a long chalk. The Biodiversity Indicator Partnership seems to have ideas of its own (though it likes the breeds indicator)…
• Proportion of local breeds classified as being at risk, not-at-risk or at unknown level of risk of extinction
• Growth in species occurrence records accessible through GBIF
and it wants to hear from you if you’ve got better ones.
They may well hear from me eventually, because we’ve been thinking about this whole indicator thing at work too. Stay tuned… In the meantime, I don’t know which specific indicator(s) Venezuela (or any other country) used, I’m afraid. I’d have to look at its NBSAP, and maybe I will one day. Or more likely, get an intern to do it. But if we take the CBD assessment at face value, and it’s the best we have at the moment, we do have some work to do on Target 13. 2020 is not that far away. Lots more mainstreaming to do.