- Chemical and microbial properties of Chinese traditional low-salt fermented whole fish product Suan yu. “The values of Enterobacteria and Pseudomonads were under the detection limits in six different brands” is about the best that can be said for it.
- Tapping into yeast diversity. Some new, diverse wild lineages in China may tell us important things about yeast ecology, evolution and domestication.
- Genome size variation among sex types in dioecious and trioecious Caricaceae species. Lots of retrotransposons, and sex chromosomes in some species.
- The Archaic Diet in Mesoamerica: Incentive for Milpa Development and Species Domestication. The diet preceded the crops.
- Genetic diversity and population structure in the rare Algodones sunflower (Helianthus niveus ssp. tephrodes). Low diversity overall, but some populations quite distinct. Which tells you about how to conserve it.
- Albania, the domestication country for pomegranate (Punica granatum L.). Well, maybe.
- Mixtures of genetically modified wheat lines outperform monocultures. Two transgenes are better than one.
- Climate change impacts on crop productivity in Africa and South Asia. -8% overall. The surprise? Sorghum declines more than maize in Africa, less in S Asia.
Nibbles: Potato/banana, European landrace project, GCARD2, Ankole in Uganda, Crowdsourcing gadgets, Cacao renewal, African food, Australian beans
- BBC pounces on CCAFS report previously trumpeted by Bioversity. Bottom line: adaptation may mean changing crops. Bottom bottom line: Will they have enough diversity?
- PGR Secure newsletter is out.
- GCARD2 rumbles on.
- The ankole cow is threatened. What, still?
- Tracking ash dieback. And since we’re talking gadgets…
- Old cacao trees being replaced in Nigeria. No word on what’s happening to the diversity they represent. Maybe it’s ex situ already? Maybe it’s not significant? I dunno, I would just like to be told.
- Slow Food documents African foods. Thankfully no ugali.
- Aussies put together cool bean collection.
Nibbles: ICRISAT genebanks, Agricultural history, Weeds, Gowda, Fruit symposium, Chaffey, Open pollinated seeds, Breeding institute, Ash dieback, Perennial grains, Marshall strawberry, Neanderthal cuisine, Colorado beetle control
- World Bank goes inside ICRISAT seed bank and finds in vitro plantlets.
- “Did mongrel grains serendipitously meld together and sprout from the sewage dumps of sedentary fishing tribes (a current theory), or was the domestication of wheat grasses, pomegranates, and fig trees a willful act of genius?” Scientific American excerpts a bit of purple prose from from Frederick Kaufman’s “Bet the Farm: How Food Stopped Being Food.”
- And a book on how (some) food (i.e. weeds) started being food.
- ICRISAT legume breeder bags award.
- One of the more interesting symposium titles I’ve come across: International Symposium on Fruit Culture and its Traditional Knowledge along Silk Road Countries.
- Plant Cuttings.
- And plant seeds. Of the open-pollinated sort.
- Donald Danforth Plant Science Center establishes Institute for International Crop Improvement (IICI). CGIAR unavailable for comment.
- CABI gets to grips with ash dieback.
- Perennial grains in practice.
- Recovered rare strawberries as art: Marshall Duchamp.
- Intrepid journo discovers secrets of Neanderthal cuisine.
- Crimson clover cover crop protects aubergines as well as insecticide against Colorado beetles.
Nibbles: Complementary conservation, Ash dieback, EUCARPIA meeting, AnGR, Green Revolution history, Fellowship, Canadienne cows, Sustainable intensification
- So apparently field genebanks are “monotonous orchards packed with tropical trees spanning as far as the eye can see.”
- Any ash genebanks, I wonder, field or otherwise?
- EUCARPIA pre-breeding pre-meeting.
- FAO moans about progress in conserving livestock.
- The Green Revolution deconstructed.
- Good news for procrastinators: the deadline for Vavilov-Frankel Fellowship applications has been extended to 18 November. Ignore the date of 11 November.
- Saving the endangered Canadienne cow. In other news, there’s a Canadienne cow.
- Friends of the Earth doesn’t think much of “sustainable intensification“.
Brainfood: Pedodiversity, Rice and CC, Bean domestication, Cassava mealybug, Grape relationships, Habitat conservation, Extinction and CC, Local provenance, Speciation, Breeding for climate change, Melon diversity, Eucalypt mating, Diverse croppping systems
- Archive and refugia of soil organisms: applying a pedodiversity framework for the conservation of biological and non-biological heritages. They want to set up a network of soil reserves. To conserve the likes of dung beetles, among other things (see last week’s Brainfood). Someone will no doubt mash this up with nature reserves and other protected areas in due course.
- Climate warming over the past three decades has shortened rice growth duration in China and cultivar shifts have further accelerated the process for late rice. One degree increase in temperature translates to about a 4 day shortening of growth period. But the problem would not be so bad if short-duration cultivars were not being increasingly used. No, I don’t fully get it either, but it seems interesting.
- Multiple origins of the determinate growth habit in domesticated common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris). The gene in question, part of the domestication syndrome, has been messed about in a variety of distinct and independent ways.
- The Cassava Mealybug (Phenacoccus manihoti) in Asia: First Records, Potential Distribution, and an Identification Key. Bad news for “the southern end of Karnataka in India, the eastern end of the Ninh Thuan province in Vietnam, and in most of West Timor in Indonesia.” No resistance. Yet.
- Genetic relationship between Chinese wild Vitis species and American and European Cultivars based on ISSR markers. It is limited. That goes for the wilds too.
- Synergies and trade-offs between ecosystem service supply, biodiversity, and habitat conservation status in Europe. What’s good for the environment is good for the environment. Or if you prefer the non-smartass version, get it from the horse’s mouth…
- Development of best practices for ex situ conservation of radish germplasm in the context of the crop genebank knowledge base. See the results for yourself.
- How does climate change cause extinction? Not so much because of intolerance to high temperatures as due to disruption of relationships with other species, as it turns out. But it’s a small sample.
- Testing the “Local Provenance” Paradigm: A Common Garden Experiment in Cumberland Plain Woodland, Sydney, Australia. No difference between locally sourced and more “exotic” provenances. Bang goes that paradigm.
- Mapping the genomic architecture of ecological speciation in the wild: does linkage disequilibrium hold the key? Clever shortcut allows identification of key genes separating phenotypically distinct but admixing species. I think. It’s complicated.
- Breeding Strategies for Adaptation of Pearl Millet and Sorghum to Climate Variability and Change in West Africa. Anything that keeps diversity in the system, basically.
- Estimation of phenotypic divergence in a collection of Cucumis melo, including shelf-life of fruit. Old-fashioned morphological characterization of small Indian collection confirms distinction between botanical varieties. Not many people hurt.
- Pollen diversity matters: revealing the neglected effect of pollen diversity on fitness in fragmented landscapes. Fragmentation means lower pollen diversity in Eucalyptus sp., means lower progeny fitness, and not just because of inbreeding.
- Increasing Cropping System Diversity Balances Productivity, Profitability and Environmental Health. So let me get this straight. You mean to tell me that a little bit of industrial agriculture (synthetic inputs) can combine with a little bit of ecoagriculture (cropping diversity) to give you something that’s kinda better than both?