- Projected temperature increases may require shifts in the growing season of cool-season crops and the growing locations of warm-season crops. In California’s Mediterranean climate, cool season crops will have to shift in time, and warm-season crops in place.
- A “Mega Population” of the Wild Potato Species Solanum fendleri. Large population, safe, accessible and very diverse. Who needs genebanks, right?
- Survival of Solanum jamesii Tubers at Freezing Temperatures. Very unusual trait in both the crop and the wild relatives, apparently.
- Diversity and uses of enset [Ensete ventricosum (Welw.) Cheesman] varieties in Angacha district, Southern Ethiopia: call for taxonomic identifications and conservation. 55 varieties in 75 homegardens, 88 in the field genebank, many in only one or the other.
- Impact of Climate Change on the Diversity and Distribution of Enset (Ensete ventricosum (Welw) Cheesman) in Ethiopia: A Review. Some are moving, some are dying. I guess we really need in vitro and cryo after all.
- Filling the gaps in gene banks: Collecting, characterizing and phenotyping wild banana relatives of Papua New Guinea. Much diversity of banana ancestor still not in genebanks, but people are on the job.
- Modeling the Impact of Crop Diseases on Global Food Security. Genetic diversity is not enough.
- What natural variation can teach us about resistance durability. That genetic diversity is not enough, apparently.
- Wheat blast: a new threat to food security. We have the genes to fight it, but they won’t be enough.
- Limited haplotype diversity underlies polygenic trait architecture across 70 years of wheat breeding. I hope at least those genes can be found in this MAGIC population based on European bread wheat varieties from the past few decades.
- Potential Short-Term Memory Induction as a Promising Method for Increasing Drought Tolerance in Sweetpotato Crop Wild Relatives [Ipomoea series Batatas (Choisy) D. F. Austin]. Wild sweet potatoes have the genes to remember drought stress, and hence cope with it better. Will they be enough though?
- Ecological pest control fortifies agricultural growth in Asia–Pacific economies. Biological control has been worth USD 15-20 billion a year for non-rice crops over the past 100 years across 23 countries. But how much is the interaction with genetic diversity worth?
- Evaluation of the contribution of teosinte to the improvement of agronomic, grain quality and yield traits in maize (Zea mays). Wild relative not just a source of stress resistance, could be useful for yield potential too.
- “It may also have prevented churchgoers from falling asleep”: southernwood, Artemisia abrotanum L. (fam. Asteraceae), in the church bouquet, and its contemporary presence as a heritage plant in Sweden. The fragrance lingers.
- Multiple cropping systems of the world and the potential for increasing cropping intensity. Multiple cropping on 12% of total agricultural area, which could increase, but probably not as much as was thought.
- Impact and returns on investment of mungbean research and development in Myanmar. Four varieties coming out of international research created economic gains of USD 1.4 billion from 1980-2016. That’s a ROI of about 90, but it took 20 years to kick in.
- Are Traditional Food Crops Really ‘Future Smart Foods?’ A Sustainability Perspective. Well, they could be, but maybe we don’t have 20 years.
- New Guinea highland wild dogs are the original New Guinea singing dogs. …which are therefore not extinct in the wild as used to be thought. Or so the DNA says.
- WEGE: A new metric for ranking locations for biodiversity conservation. That’s “Weighted Endemism including Global Endangerment,” and it hasn’t been tried on plants. Yet.
- Toward Unifying Global Hotspots of Wild and Domesticated Biodiversity. They overlap a lot but not completely. Expect WEGE to be applied at some stage.
Nibbles: Robin Graham RIP, Fred Bliss award, Seed production, Chile spuds, Indian goats, Ancient bread, Horner Bier, Cheap food, Vigna, Singing dog, Fungal diversity
- Remembering Robin Graham, prophet of biofortification.
- Honouring plant breeder supreme Fred Blisss.
- Need to produce seed of all those new varieties that breeders come up with.
- And save the stuff they will replace: The Economist does the potatoes of Chiloé.
- Hey, it’s not just about the crops: conserving goats on farm in India.
- The experimental archaeology of bread thrives under corona. And if you were intrigued by the potato detoxification reference, find the details on Bill Schindler’s website. And not only bread and potatoes, also beer…
- Like Mozart’s oat beer? Which was apparently killed off by lager back in Austria but is now available in Denver.
- Food shouldn’t be cheap, it should be affordable, and not only for those who consume it. Ancient Egyptian bread will be exempted.
- No way Kenyan coffee can be described as cheap. h/t Jeremy’s newsletter: have you subscribed yet?
- I don’t know how cheap mungbean is in Myanmar, but it seems to be very valuable.
- The PNG singing dog is not extinct in the wild after all? Priceless.
- Combination of key and photo guide to the identification of European fungi. Worth its weight in truffles. Source.
Brainfood: Bacterial contamination, Yam diversity, Multi-parent pops, Small millets breeding, Plural valuation, Seed conservation, Transition, Wild spuds, Enset conservation, Cassava viruses, Maize stemborer, Rice roots
- Identification and Control of Latent Bacteria in in vitro Cultures of Sweetpotato [Ipomoea batatas (L.) Lam]. 10% of about 2400 in vitro plantlets had a total of about 20 types of bacteria, some of which might be beneficial for all we know, but all of which could be removed.
- Genome-wide genotyping elucidates the geographical diversification and dispersal of the polyploid and clonally propagated yam (Dioscorea alata L.). Asian and Pacific genepools, thence to India, then Africa, then the Caribbean.
- Multi-parent populations in crops: a toolbox integrating genomics and genetic mapping with breeding. Like MAGIC.
- Genetic and genomic resources, and breeding for accelerating improvement of small millets: current status and future interventions. Here’s all the promising material, now go crazy with the MAGIC.
- Plural valuation of nature for equity and sustainability: Insights from the Global South. The road to decolonizing conservation.
- Long-Term Storage and Longevity of Orthodox Seeds: A Systematic Review. Treat your seeds right.
- Changes in food access by mestizo communities associated with deforestation and agrobiodiversity loss in Ucayali, Peruvian Amazon. Less diversified diets, loss of forest cover and reduced agricultural biodiversity go together, somehow.
- Evaluation of Wild Potato Germplasm for Tuber Starch Content and Nitrogen Utilization Efficiency. Wild species are better on both counts.
- Conservation protocols for Ensete glaucum, a crop wild relative of banana, using plant tissue culture and cryopreservation techniques on seeds and zygotic embryos. 2 accessions thus conserved at NBPGR.
- Computational models to improve surveillance for cassava brown streak disease and minimize yield loss. Fancy maths shows that planting clean material helps a lot.
- Genome wide association analysis of a stemborer egg induced “call-for-help” defence trait in maize. “…egg-induced parasitoid attraction trait was more common in landraces than in improved inbred lines and hybrids.”
- Low Additive Genetic Variation in a Trait Under Selection in Domesticated Rice. That would be root growth under drought and Al stress conditions. Every accession has a different set of low frequency causal alleles.
Brainfood: Biodiversity targets, Image software, Potato efficiency, Cassava cyanide, Popcorn, Payment for agrobiodiversity, Walnut conservation, Grapevine leaves, Pigeonpea haplotypes, Chakras, Diet & diversity, Seed activism, Seed longevity
- Genetic diversity targets and indicators in the CBD post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework must be improved. Better than accession numbers? Well, yeah, but will it matter?
- FIELDimageR: An R package to analyze orthomosaic images from agricultural field trials. Extract plot-level results from your drone shots, automagically.
- Radiation Interception, Conversion and Partitioning Efficiency in Potato Landraces: How Far Are We from the Optimum? Quite far, but perhaps more interestingly you can predict tuber yield from time-series aerial imagery. Which means the above could come in useful.
- Genetic architecture and gene mapping of cyanide in cassava (Manihot esculenta Crantz.). High cyanide alleles in 2 major genes mainly found along Amazonian rivers and in coastal areas of Brazil. Drones unavailable for comment.
- Relationships among American popcorn and their links with landraces conserved in a microcenter of diversity. Did the diverse popcorns of southern Brazil derive from local diversification or independent local domestication? More work needed. Anyone going to mash this up with the cassava result above?
- Payments for agrobiodiversity conservation services: An overview of Latin American experiences, lessons learned and upscaling challenges. 5 ha of each of 100 varieties will cost you US$70,000 p.a. at a 5% discount rate. Bargain.
- Diversity Under Threat: Connecting Genetic Diversity and Threat Mapping to Set Conservation Priorities for Juglans regia L. Populations in Central Asia. Ex situ where threat level from climate change is severe, in situ where threat level due to climate change is minor, assisted natural regeneration where threat level from climate change is minor but severe from other things, like overgrazing. No word on payments for ecosystem services rendered.
- Composite modeling of leaf shape across shoots discriminates Vitis species better than individual leaves. Fancy maths used to composite leaf shapes along a shoot as a way of telling species apart.
- Superior haplotypes for haplotype‐based breeding for drought tolerance in pigeonpea (Cajanus cajan L.). From 10 genes and about 300 genotypes to 17 accessions with 4 superior haplotypes.
- Create Space for Indigenous Leadership to Preserve Agricultural Biodiversity. In the Ecuadorian Amazon, cacao production for cash is not driving down agrobiodiversity.
- Conceptual Links between Landscape Diversity and Diet Diversity: A Roadmap for Transdisciplinary Research. There are 4 different pathways whereby diverse forested landscapes can lead to diet diversity.
- ‘Keeping seeds in our hands’: the rise of seed activism. While the formal sector is still arguing about farmers’ rights, activists have moved the paradigm to seed sovereignty.
- Thirty-year monitoring and statistical analysis of 50 species’ germinability in genebank medium-term storage suggest specific characteristics in seed longevity. Huge dataset reveals some geographic variation in seed longevity within crops, among other things.
Brainfood: Stress, Peasants’ rights, Maize domestication, Plant diversity, Teff evaluation, Red clover diversity, WTP, AnGR cryo, Sheep history, Population & biodiversity, Planet proofing, Cassava map
- Rapid detection of stressed agricultural environments in Africa under climatic change 2000–2050 using agricultural resource indices and a hotspot mapping approach. Even some coldspots will turn hot.
- The UN Declaration on Peasants’ Rights (UNDROP): Is Article 19 on seed rights adequately balancing intellectual property rights and the right to food? What do you think?
- The genetic architecture of the maize progenitor, teosinte, and how it was altered during maize domestication. Domestication worked on lots and lots of really small-effect QTLs.
- Areas of plant diversity — What do we know? Quite a lot, actually.
- Current and projected eco-geographic adaptation and phenotypic diversity of Ethiopian teff (Eragrostis teff) across its cultivation range. Genebank collection thoroughly evaluated. Genebank unavailable for comment.
- Population structure and genetic diversity in red clover (Trifolium pratense L.) germplasm. Genotyping shows 4 geographic groups, with some linked phenotypic differences.
- ‘Warehouse’ or research centre? Analyzing public preferences for conservation, pre-breeding and characterization activities at the Czech genebank. Research centre, but only up to a point.
- Pollen Cryopreservation for Plant Breeding and Genetic Resources Conservation. Gotta wonder what the public preference for conserving pollen might be.
- The recent state of cryopreservation techniques for ex-situ gene conservation and breeding purposes in small ruminants: A review. Oocytes and embryos need more work than pollen.
- Archaeogenetic analysis of Neolithic sheep from Anatolia suggests a complex demographic history since domestication. Domestication bottleneck, followed by diversity increase due to admixture. Too late to cryo, alas.
- A systematic review of biodiversity and demographic change: A misinterpreted relationship? High human population numbers are usually bad for biodiversity, but not everywhere and not always.
- A re-boot of tropical agriculture benefits food production, rural economies, health, social justice and the environment. Plant cool species on degraded farmland. Especially where human population density is high?
- CassavaMap, a fine-resolution disaggregation of cassava production and harvested area in Africa in 2014. Always good to have the next crop production map.