- Food contributes 1/3 of greenhouse gas emissions.
- How we got to the above.
- And a focus on how farming started in South Asia in particular.
- A long-term seed experiment carries on.
- Another chapter in the story of the comeback of the American chestnut?
- Want to help a heirloom make a comeback?
- There’s a newsletter on the law and policy behind all this stuff.
Brainfood: Lettuce, Little millet, Finger millet, Rice, Maize, Apple, Brassicas, Onions, Grapevine, Tomato, Sheep, Species diversity, Genetic diversity
- Whole-genome resequencing of 445 Lactuca accessions reveals the domestication history of cultivated lettuce. Originally domesticated in the Caucasus, for oil, and then a long, slow wander westward. But so much more to it…
- Variability and trait‐specific accessions for grain yield and nutritional traits in germplasm of little millet (Panicum sumatrense Roth. Ex. Roem. & Schult.). From 200 accessions to 5 both high yielding and rich in Ca.
- Genomic and phenotypic characterization of finger millet indicates a complex diversification history. Wait, East Africa is the least genetically diverse area?
- Portrait of a genus: the genetic diversity of Zea. There has been convergent adaptation in high altitude teosinte and high latitude (temperate) maize.
- Genetic diversity of African wild rice (Oryza longistaminata Chev. et Roehr) at the edge of its distribution. The Ethiopian material is special.
- Candidate genes and signatures of directional selection on fruit quality traits during apple domestication. Fruit colour and taste genes lose diversity during domestication.
- The Evolutionary History of Wild, Domesticated, and Feral Brassica oleracea (Brassicaceae). B. cretica is the closest wild relative.
- Brassica rapa domestication: untangling wild and feral forms and convergence of crop morphotypes. The truly wild stuff comes from the Caucasus, Siberia and … Italy.
- ‘Neodomesticates’ of the Himalayan allium spices (Allium species) in Uttarakhand, India and studies on eco-geography and morphology. Gotta know your onions.
- Multiple independent recombinations led to hermaphroditism in grapevine. The switch from dioecious to hermaphroditic flowers happened two times, but before domestication.
- Revitalization of the Greek Vitis database: a multimedia web-backed genetic database for germplasm management of Vitis resources in Greece. Welcome back!
- Participatory Plant Breeding and the Evolution of Landraces: A Case Study in the Organic Farms of the Collserola Natural Park. From 80 plants of the Mando tomato landrace to over 2000.
- Evidence for early dispersal of domestic sheep into Central Asia. Sheep were being kept in the Ferghana Valley 3000 years earlier than thought.
- A metric for spatially explicit contributions to science-based species targets. Sustainable crop production and forestry in Indonesia, Colombia, Mexico, Madagascar and Brazil would make a hell of a difference.
- Conserving intraspecific variation for nature’s contributions to people. Oh good, I’m glad somebody thought of this.
Nibbles: Plant book, Heirlooms, Vavilov, Breeding
- Amazing plant stories from Jon Drori.
- An amazing crop diversity stat from DW.
- Amazing botanist story.
- Kind of amazing this got published.
Nibbles: Big Ag, Agroecology, Open seeds, Canadian garlic, CSN, CGIAR, Mary Jane, Rapid phenotyping, DSI, Roman gardens
- Yay Big Agriculture!
- Don’t listen to them: yay agroecology!
- Come down everyone, DW with the balanced view on open seeds.
- Meanwhile, there’s a project to document all the garlic varieties grown in Canada.
- And the Community Seed Network is hard at work.
- All those seeds are going to have to be kept alive: this is how the CGIAR genebanks do it.
- Morocco thinks about legalizing kif.
- Need help phenotyping your kif, Morocco?
- Soon there will be lots of sequence information on that kif, and then you’ll need a way to regulate access, and this study for the European Commission might help.
- Ok you’ll need a palate cleanser after that, I suspect: Roman gardens, perhaps?
Brainfood: Allium collecting, IPK barley double, Capsicum crossability, Genetic erosion, Chickpea breeding, Maize phenotyping, Maize landraces, Pre-adaptation, Synthetic peanuts, Genomic offset, Cotton domestication, Public breeding, Wholeness, Smallness trifecta
- Collecting and regenerating populations of the Allium ampeloprasum complex from Greece. There’s some good news, and some bad news.
- Genomic prediction models trained with historical records enable populating the German ex situ genebank bio-digital resource center of barley (Hordeum sp.) with information on resistances to soilborne barley mosaic viruses. Good news if you want to get usable data on genebank accession from old experiments.
- Using Genome-Wide Predictions to Assess the Phenotypic Variation of a Barley (Hordeum sp.) Gene Bank Collection for Important Agronomic Traits and Passport Information. Good news if you thought the above was good news.
- Reproductive compatibility in Capsicum is not necessarily reflected in genetic or phenotypic similarity between species complexes. Bad news for the genepool concept.
- Trends in Varietal Diversity of Main Staple Crops in Asia and Africa and Implications for Sustainable Food Systems. Bad news, especially for Asia, if you like to see diversity on farm.
- Broadening the genetic base of cultivated chickpea following introgression of wild Cicer species-progress, constraints and prospects. Good news if you like to see diversity in chickpea breeding.
- DeepCob: Precise and high-throughput analysis of maize cob geometry using deep learning with an application in genebank phenomics. Great news if you’ve got a whole bunch of maize cobs to measure.
- Demonstration of local adaptation of maize landraces by reciprocal transplantation. Good news if you think landraces are locally adapted.
- Exaptation Traits for Megafaunal Mutualisms as a Factor in Plant Domestication. Good news if you want to learn a new word. Fascinating stuff, all kidding apart.
- Morphological and reproductive characterization of nascent allotetraploids cross-compatible with cultivated peanut (Arachis hypogaea L.). Good news if you like the idea of re-running domestication and there’s no suitable megafauna available.
- Parallel and Intertwining Threads of Domestication in Allopolyploid Cotton. Good news if you’re interested in the domestication, spread, and introgression of the 2 New World cottons.
- Can public universities play a role in fostering seed sovereignty? The good news is the answer is yes.
- Ecosystem integrity is neither real nor valuable. The good news is this may be a straw man. Interesting argument, though.
- Prospects and limitations of genomic offset in conservation management. Good news if you abandon the concept of ecosystem integrity.
- Higher yields and more biodiversity on smaller farms. Good news if you still think small is beautiful.
- Do small food businesses enable small farms to connect to regional food systems? Evidence from 9 European regions. More good news for small farms.
- Global Legal Constraints: How the International System Fails Small-Scale Farmers and Agricultural Biodiversity, Harming Human and Planetary Health, and What to Do About It. Bad news for the agri-food-industrial complex, come the revolution.