Threats

April 9, 2018April 9, 2018

Where to find stressed rice in Nigeria

So last week’s Brainfood led with a paper mapping various abiotic stresses affecting rice in Africa, noting that the next step would be to mash up the results with germplasm provenances.

Well, I decided to do it myself. Here’s the distribution of “iron-rich soils” in Nigeria and potentially affected rice area (the paper’s Fig. 8b), the latter coming from the SPAM project we have alluded to before as a source of data on crop cultivation.

The yellow rings are African rice landraces, the red dots all rice landraces, both from Genesys. If you click on the map, you’ll see it much better, and notice that there’s not much rice germplasm from the more brownish areas, denoting rice cultivation areas with Fe-richer soils. Should these be targets for collecting? Kind of depends if landraces are still grown in those places, but it’s a start.

April 9, 2018April 9, 2018

Brainfood: Vine breeding, Moroccan veggie erosion, Potato charisma, Pigeonpea diversity, Dietary diversity, Cannabis breeding, Cattle domestication, Late blight gene

Vitis vinifera L. fruit diversity to breed varieties anticipating climate changes. Nice, but isn’t this leaving it rather late?
The Deterioration of Morocco’s Vegetable Crop Genetic Diversity: An Analysis of the Souss-Massa Region. 80-90% loss in 30 years.
Interspecies Respect and Potato Conservation in the Peruvian Cradle of Domestication. Some varieties have more charisma than others.
Quantitative Analysis, Distribution and Traditional Management of Pigeon Pea [Cajanus Cajan (L.) Millsp.] Landraces’ Diversity in Southern Benin. Larger farms have slightly more varieties, otherwise difficult to find socioeconomic correlates of diversity; main criterion for choosing varieties is market value.
Higher agrobiodiversity is associated with improved dietary diversity, but not child anthropometric status, of Mayan Achí people of Guatemala. Diversifying diets won’t help without better toilets.
Dwarf germplasm: the key to giant Cannabis hempseed and cannabinoid crops. The mainstreaming of weed continues. The Man unavailable for comment.
Early North African Cattle Domestication and Its Ecological Setting: A Reassessment. No early North African cattle domestication after all?
Identification and rapid mapping of a gene conferring broad-spectrum late blight resistance in the diploid potato species Solanum verrucosum through DNA capture technologies. From Mexico with love.

April 3, 2018April 30, 2018

Brainfood: Rice stress maps, Saline rice, Forage millet, Diversification, Deforestation & diets, CC impacts, Elite cassava, Indian quarantine, Chinese urban ag, Squash diversity, Tomato minerals, Hidden hunger

Mapping abiotic stresses for rice in Africa: Drought, cold, iron toxicity, salinity and sodicity. Now to mash this up with germplasm provenance information…
Screening of rice landraces (Oryza sativa L.) for seedling stage salinity tolerance using morpho-physiological and molecular markers. …you know, so that this sort of thing could be predicted, perhaps.
Identification of promising sources for fodder traits in the world collection of pearl millet at the ICRISAT genebank. 14 out of 326. Difficult to predict from environmental data, though, I suspect.
Agricultural diversification as an important strategy for achieving food security in Africa. More diverse households and farming systems are more food secure, but only up to a point, and it depends on various factors. 43% of African cropland will be difficult to diversify.
Deforestation and child diet diversity: A geospatial analysis of 15 Sub-Saharan African countries. Deforestation is bad for diet diversity. No word on overlap with the above mentioned 43%.
Two-thirds of global cropland area impacted by climate oscillations. I bet you that includes most of the above-mentioned 43%.
Exchanging and managing in-vitro elite germplasm to combat Cassava Brown Streak Disease (CBSD) and Cassava Mosaic Disease (CMD) in Eastern and Southern Africa. The devil is in the logistics.
Risk of pathogens associated with plant germplasm imported into India from various countries. See what I mean?
An exploration of the implication and feasibility of UAH (Urban Agricultural Heritages) in China. I for one really want to see the Xuanhua traditional vineyard system.
Genetic Resources in the “Calabaza Pipiana” Squash (Cucurbita argyrosperma) in Mexico: Genetic Diversity, Genetic Differentiation and Distribution Models. Balsas-Jalisco is a potential center of domestication. Isn’t it the same for maize?
Genetic differences in macro-element mineral concentrations among 52 historically important tomato varieties. Fairly strong and mostly independent, except for K and Mg.
The global burden of chronic and hidden hunger: Trends and determinants. Growth not as good on hidden hunger as on chronic. Let them eat tomatoes.

March 13, 2018

Nibbles: MGIS, DOIs, Lost apples found, Row 7 Seeds, EBN, “Influential” seed people.

Banana people release new banana germplasm database, featuring DOIs.
Video explaining what DOIs are and why they’re cool.
Five apple varieties to get DOIs before it’s too late? Probably not.
“A seed company built by chefs and breeders striving to make ingredients taste better before they ever hit a plate.” Whatever next.
Occupy the food system.
Extension works. In a big way. With agronomy anyway. Think what it could do with seeds…

March 12, 2018March 9, 2018

Brainfood: Core collections, Food system sustainability, Sunflower breeding, Modern/traditional mosaic, Nepal earthquake response, Modelling erosion, Folate in potato, Argentinian andigena, Millet evaluation, Pigeonpea evaluation, Sugarcane evaluation, Bean drought genes, Threatened trees

An informational view of accession rarity and allele specificity in germplasm banks for management and conservation. Basically a better way of making cores.
Multi-indicator sustainability assessment of global food systems. Thankfully includes both “Shannon Diversity of Food Supply” and “Food Production Diversity”. No sign of the Agrobiodiversity Index, though, alas.
Cytoplasmic Diversity Studies in Sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.): A Review. Have the wild relatives to thank for it.
Mosaic of Traditional and Modern Agriculture Systems for Enhancing Resilience. Refers specifically to rice irrigation systems, but could be generalizable, why not?
Post-disaster agricultural transitions in Nepal. To cardamon, mainly.
Simulating the Impacts of Climate Variability and Change on Crop Varietal Diversity in Mali (West-Africa) Using Agent-Based Modeling Approach. Less favourable and unstable climatic conditions lead to loss of diversity.
Genetic Diversity in Argentine Andean Potatoes by Means of Functional Markers. There’s a small group of weird, interesting ones.
Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) markers associated with high folate content in wild potato species. Ten-fold variation in content in in F2 population derived from cross between high folate diploid clone of wild Solanum boliviense and low/medium folate diploid S. tuberosum. Nice.
Identification of new sources of resistance for pearl millet downy mildew disease under field conditions. 20 really good ones out of 101. Could have been worse.
Assay of Genetic Architecture for Identification of Waterlogging Tolerant Pigeonpea Germplasm. 38 out of 128 survived. People are lucky this week.
Phenotypic evaluation of a diversity panel selected from the world collection of sugarcane (Saccharum spp) and related grasses. Out of 300, 27 were higher than commercial standards in dry or fresh mass. On a roll here.
Genotyping by Sequencing and Genome–Environment Associations in Wild Common Bean Predict Widespread Divergent Adaptation to Drought. Two genes identified. Let’s quit while we’re ahead. No, come on, let’s do another one.
Tree genetic resources at risk in South America: A spatial threat assessment to prioritize populations for conservation. 7 of 80 socieconomically important trees threatened across their range. Damn.