- Lawrence Haddad on how to start transforming the food system.
- Here’s an idea: CIMMYT genebank recognized for restoring agricultural diversity in Guatemala.
- And another. Cash transfers are better than more conventional interventions for malnutrition, but they have to be real money.
- But, of course, they don’t always work. That’s one of many development myths listed in this fun Twitter thread.
- We also need metrics, sure, but the right ones, and we may already have them.
- The first ecologist remembered. That would be Humboldt.
- Terrible visualizations of the changing geography of American agriculture.
- But where are heirloom grown? Rice, say?
- And where are all the pomegranate farmers?
- I’m sure there are plenty of grape maps of France somewhere. But what’s with all these varieties? And are there more than in pomegranate?
- IUCN launches a new Red List website.
- Laos launches a sort of Red List website on traditional foods. Here it is. No word on linkages with Ark of Taste.
- Belgian lambic beer threatened by climate change. Now it’s personal.
- In Italy, the landscape needs people to keep it safe.
- Even olive landscapes, which maybe need to be more promiscuous.
- Early agricultural migrations fuelled by cheese.
- Early eggplant migrations fuelled by elephants.
- Microbes to the rescue.
Brainfood: Quinoa boom, Diet affordability, Insect boom and bust, Organic & pests, Maize agroforestry, Landraces, Wheat roots, Conservation costs, Sustainable intensification, Defences & domestication, Polyploid niches, Mexican CWR, Danish apples, Diversity proxies, Grassland nutrient hotspots
- Foods and fads: The welfare impacts of rising quinoa prices in Peru. Modest.
- Measuring the Affordability of Nutritious Diets in Africa: Price Indexes for Diet Diversity and the Cost of Nutrient Adequacy. Maybe they could try quinoa.
- Impacts of climate warming on terrestrial ectotherms across latitude. Insects are in trouble in the tropics, but will make up for it at higher latitudes, which will be really bad for crops there, 10-25% more bad.
- Evidence that organic farming promotes pest control. Something for farmers in those higher latitudes to think about.
- The global distribution of Bacillus anthracis and associated anthrax risk to humans, livestock, and wildlife. 63.8 million rural poor livestock keepers are at risk. No word on effect of climate change.
- Do open-pollinated maize varieties perform better than hybrids in agroforestry systems? Maybe in Rwanda, but in Ethiopia not so much.
- More than Yield: Ecosystem Services of Traditional versus Modern Crop Varieties Revisited. Landraces are liked for yield stability in marginal environments, and for cultural reasons.
- Root and shoot traits in parental, early and late generation Green Revolution wheats (Triticum spp.) under glasshouse conditions. Modern wheat have smaller roots.
- Standardized reporting of the costs of management interventions for biodiversity conservation. Behind a paywall, so can’t tell whether includes genebanks. But I bet it doesn’t. Tell me I’m wrong.
- Global assessment of agricultural system redesign for sustainable intensification. Apparently 30% of farms and 10% of agricultural land worldwide, which is both more and less than I would have guessed.
- Genetic homogeneity of North-African goats. The Berber breeds are different, everything else is a big mixed up mess.
- Plant domestication decreases both constitutive and induced chemical defences by direct selection against defensive traits. In cabbage, even the tissues that are not eaten are more edible than in the wild relative.
- Polyploid plants have faster rates of multivariate climatic niche evolution than their diploid relatives. Relevant for domestication?
- An Initiative for the Study and Use of Genetic Diversity of Domesticated Plants and Their Wild Relatives. In Mexico.
- Population structure, relatedness and ploidy levels in an apple gene bank revealed through genotyping-by-sequencing. There’s a lot of inter-relatedness in the Danish collection.
- Biases induced by using geography and environment to guide ex situ conservation. “Although geographic and environmental diversity have proven to be reliable predictors of allele frequency differences and ecotypic differentiation across species ranges, they appear to be poor predictors of allelic diversity per se.” At least for 3 species.
- Examining the spectra of herbarium uses and users. Herbaria mostly used by taxonomists shock.
- Ancient herders enriched and restructured African grasslands. Shit. You heard me.
Brainfood: Fox domestication, Wheat synthesis, Microscale selection, Sports, Brinjal evolution, Famous faba, Synthetic wheats, Watkins collection, Wheat genetic gains, Chinese cattle
- Red fox genome assembly identifies genomic regions associated with tame and aggressive behaviours. It’s down to synaptic plasticity, among other things.
- Development and identification of new synthetic T. turgidum–T. monococcum amphiploids. Did this never happen in the wild?
- Genomic adaptation to drought in wild barley is driven by edaphic natural selection at the Tabigha Evolution Slope. Big genetic differences in wild populations just meters apart but on different soil types.
- Attention sports fans! The far-reaching contributions of bud sport mutants to horticulture and plant biology. Much more than just Pinot gris.
- Shedding new light on the origin and spread of the brinjal eggplant (Solanum melongena L.) and its wild relatives. Originated in Africa, moved to Asia, where it was domesticated; spread in Africa by elephants.
- ILB 938, a valuable faba bean (Vicia faba L.) accession. Goes well with chianti. Note the DOI.
- Unlocking the novel genetic diversity and population structure of synthetic Hexaploid wheat. More in diversity in synthetics compared to elite bread wheats.
- Genetic Gains for Grain Yield in CIMMYT’s Semi-Arid Wheat Yield Trials Grown in Suboptimal Environments. 1.6% per year (2002-2014), not least because of the above.
- Hidden variation in polyploid wheat drives local adaptation. Could this contribute to continuing the above?
- Genome-wide scanning reveals genetic diversity and signatures of selection in Chinese indigenous cattle breeds. More diversity in the north.
Nibbles: Carrot breeding, BIEN, Protected areas databases, Brazilian genebanks, Endangered coconut genebank, DSI, ABS, Climate pix, Botanical pix double, Potatoes galore, Pandanus language, Archaeological double, Palestinian seed saving
- Putting the polyacetylene back into carrots.
- The Botanical Information and Ecology Network gets an upgrade. Any CWRs among its 18,844,855 more observations?
- And any is protected areas? This will tell how well they’re managed. Mash up with this spatial database on indigenous lands?
- Otherwise, there are genebanks, though not enough in Brazil, apparently.
- And not always safe.
- What to do with Digital Sequence Information? Would be nice to be clear on what it is.
- ABS broken down by ISF. And the CGIAR. Not DSI though.
- Need climate visuals? Well, who doesn’t.
- The Columbian Exchange has visuals also.
- And the Royal Horticultural Society too.
- Speaking of Columbian Exchange: frites. And Vavilov, chefs, etc.
- Speaking about nuts in PNG. Comment by Jim Croft, who would know: “Except the species illustrated is the widespread oceanic strand species, Pandanus tectorius, not the endemic highland crop ‘karuka’, Pandanus julianettii.”
- 5000-year-old brewery in Egypt.
- 14,000-year-old bread.
- Fast forward 14,000 years.
Brainfood: African rice domestication, Barley evaluation, Al & sorghum, Potato seed systems, Yield trends, Arachis resynthesis, Potato breeding, Lupinus evolution, Helianthus invasiveness, Wild cassava, Beaked maize return, Amaranth breeding, Vegetables, American dogs
- The Rise and Fall of African Rice Cultivation Revealed by Analysis of 246 New Genomes. Domesticated in northern Mali as a result of the decline of wild species due to the drying of the Sahara.
- Unlocking historical phenotypic data from an ex situ collection to enhance the informed utilization of genetic resources of barley (Hordeum sp.). Don’t throw away that historical data from regenerations.
- Exploiting sorghum genetic diversity for enhanced aluminum tolerance: Allele mining based on the AltSB locus. It’s more prevalent in guinea sorghums.
- Unearthing unevenness of potato seed networks in the high Andes: a comparison of distinct cultivar groups and farmer types following seasons with and without acute stress. Potatoes are not just potatoes. And farmers are not just farmers.
- Global patterns of crop yield stability under additional nutrient and water inputs. Higher variability in yield expected under higher fertilizer inputs.
- Segmental allopolyploidy in action: Increasing diversity through polyploid hybridization and homoeologous recombination. Domesticating peanuts, the right way this time.
- Applications of New Breeding Technologies for Potato Improvement. Humble no more?
- Pleistocene glacial cycles drive isolation, gene flow and speciation in the high‐elevation Andes. In Lupinus, phylogeny does not recapitulate orogeny.
- Evolution of invasiveness by genetic accommodation. In a crop wild relative, no less.
- Manihot takape sp. nov. (Euphorbiaceae), a new tuberous subshrub from the Paraguayan Chaco. A crop wild relative too.
- Back to beaked: Zea mays subsp. mays Rostrata Group in northern Italy, refugia and revival of open-pollinated maize landraces in an intensive cropping system. Title of the week. Alternative: Polenta Power.
- From zero to hero: the past, present and future of grain amaranth breeding. Runner up.
- Issues and Prospects for the Sustainable Use and Conservation of Cultivated Vegetable Diversity for More Nutrition-Sensitive Agriculture. Still neglected.
- The evolutionary history of dogs in the Americas. They came over from Siberia with people, rather than evolving from local wolves, but all that’s left of them is a cancer.