- Susan Bragdon and others on what Trump’s agricultural trade war with China really means.
- Meanwhile, in Tucson…
- What we need is Smart Foods.
- The cheese history video we’ve all been waiting for.
- Wild eggplants at WorldVeg.
Brainfood: Coca phylogeny, Potato taste & nutrition & resistance, CC & nutrition, Light & nutrition, Remote poverty, Spicy toms, Input subsidies, Broilerocene, European livestock then & now, Bean domestication, Peach domestication, Machine conservation, Habitat fragmentation, Conservation planning, Taxidermy, Wheat diversity, Livestock GS
- Phylogenetic inference in section Archerythroxylum informs taxonomy, biogeography, and the domestication of coca (Erythroxylum species). Morphology is not enough.
- Improving Flavor to Increase Consumption. Yield is not enough.
- The Nutritional Contribution of Potato Varietal Diversity in Andean Food Systems: a Case Study. Yield is not enough.
- Stacking three late blight resistance genes from wild species directly into African highland potato varieties confers complete field resistance to local blight races. One resistance gene is not enough.
- Income growth and climate change effects on global nutrition security to mid-century. Calories will not be enough.
- Urbanization and Child Nutritional Outcomes. Urbanization is enough.
- Socioecologically informed use of remote sensing data to predict rural household poverty. Night light is not enough.
- Capsaicinoids: Pungency beyond Capsicum. Peppers and tomatoes are not enough.
- The impact of agricultural input subsidies on food and nutrition security: a systematic review. The data are not enough.
- The broiler chicken as a signal of a human reconfigured biosphere. The broiler is enough.
- Pre-Roman improvements to agricultural production: Evidence from livestock husbandry in late prehistoric Italy. The Romans were not enough.
- Optimizing ex situ genetic resource collections for European livestock conservation. One genebank is not enough.
- Does the Genomic Landscape of Species Divergence in Phaseolus Beans Coerce Parallel Signatures of Adaptation and Domestication? One genome is enough.
- Genome re-sequencing reveals the evolutionary history of peach fruit edibility. Human selection was not enough.
- Predicting plant conservation priorities on a global scale. This black box is enough.
- Is habitat fragmentation bad for biodiversity? Small patches may be enough.
- Synergies between the key biodiversity area and systematic conservation planning approaches. One conservation approach is not enough.
- Capturing goats: documenting two hundred years of mitochondrial DNA diversity among goat populations from Britain and Ireland. Stuffed goats are enough.
- Decline in climate resilience of European wheat. The current varieties are not enough.
- Harnessing genomic information for livestock improvement. Genomic selection was going to be enough.
Brainfood: Distribution modelling, New mycorrhiza, Bean diversity, Collecting, Intensification, Wildish rice, Wild tomato genome, Conservation prioritization, Horizon scanning, Maize domestication, Livestock sustainability, Asexual rice
- Incorporating knowledge uncertainty into species distribution modelling. Not sure about this.
- A mycorrhizal revolution. “Fine root endophytes are arbuscule-forming fungi unexpectedly placed in Mucoromycotina.” Wow. I think.
- Genetic Diversity within Snap Beans and Their Relation to Dry Beans. Snap beans came from dry beans, but maybe more than once and from both Andean and Mesoamerican genepools, and now they make up 8 genepools.
- Two decades of evolutionary changes in Brassica rapa in response to fluctuations in precipitation and severe drought. It matters when you collect germplasm.
- Agricultural intensification, dietary diversity, and markets in the global food security narrative. What if it’s intensification through diversification, though? Didn’t think of that, did you?
- Seed characteristic variations and genetic structure of wild Zizania latifolia along a latitudinal gradient in China: implications for neo-domestication as a grain crop. Crop wild relative that is also a crop might be a good candidate to become another crop.
- The Genome Sequence of the Wild Tomato Solanum pimpinellifolium Provides Insights Into Salinity Tolerance. It’s all in the inositol pathway.
- Not all data are equal: Influence of data type and amount in spatial conservation prioritisation. Follow the money. Ok, to unpack that, read this.
- A Horizon Scan of Emerging Issues for Global Conservation in 2019. Biotechnological advances in crop breeding may impact insects and land use.
- Multiproxy evidence highlights a complex evolutionary legacy of maize in South America. Linguistics, archaeology and genetics say maize left Mexico semi-domesticated, was finished off and diversified in Amazonia.
- Assessing the Role of Cattle in Sustainable Food Systems. They still have one.
- A male-expressed rice embryogenic trigger redirected for asexual propagation through seeds. Clonal propagation of hybrids. What could possibly go wrong?
Brainfood: ART, Rice diversity double, ABS, Spanish beans, Crop protection, Almond sex, Biotourism, Alpine meadows, Wheat treble, Baobab products, Wild Brassica, Cappello del prete pumpkin, Strawberry fields forever, Cassava seed networks, Indonesian chickens got talent
- Andean roots and tubers crops as sources of functional foods. Tasty too.
- Development of species diagnostic SNP markers for quality control genotyping in four rice (Oryza L.) species. About 3% misclassification in the AfricaRice genebank.
- Analysis of population structure and genetic diversity reveals gene flow and geographic patterns in cultivated rice (O. sativa and O. glaberrima) in West Africa. Natural NERICA. Hopefully this was done after the above.
- Conserving Genetic Resources, Access and Benefit-Sharing, Intellectual Property and Climate Change. It’s complicated. Too complicated.
- The Spanish Core Collection of Common Beans (Phaseolus vulgaris L.): An Important Source of Variability for Breeding Chemical Composition. The white ones may be better nutritionally. Opportunities to breed for better nutrition AND taste.
- The Future of Sustainable Crop Protection Relies on Increased Diversity of Cropping Systems and Landscapes. The efficacy of chemistry is decreasing.
- Cross-incompatibility in the cultivated almond (Prunus dulcis): Updating, revision and correction. As most cultivars self-incompatible, you need this information if you want to do any conservation and breeding, let alone actually produce almonds.
- Global relationships between biodiversity and nature-based tourism in protected areas. The ideal protected area for tourism is very biodiverse, old, large, near a city and on top of a mountain. Same for agritourism?
- Biodiversity-based payments on Swiss alpine pastures. You get more money if you graze smaller, more diverse herds.
- Identification of new sources of resistance to wheat stem rust in Aegilops spp. in the tertiary genepool of wheat. 60% of 1400 very wild accessions with no genomes in common with cultivated wheat showed low infection.
- Mapping of QTL associated with seed longevity in durum wheat (Triticum durum Desf.). How long before we tailor seed testing and regeneration intervals to accession genotype?
- Breeding durum wheat for agroforestry: what to look for? Isn’t nature wonderful?
- Consumer Preferences for Baobab Products and Implication for Conservation and Improvement Policies of Forest Food Resources in Niger (West Africa). You could charge a little more and use the money for conservation.
- Adaptive significance of functional germination traits in crop wild relatives of Brassica. Could tap wild species for more consistent germination under future rainfed conditions.
- Morphological characterisation of Cucurbita maxima Duchesne (Cucurbitaceae) landraces from the Po Valley (Northern Italy). Who needs DNA?
- Domestication of Temperate and Coastal Hybrids with Distinct Ancestral Gene Selection in Octoploid Strawberry. The Californian, costal-adapted material is richer in alleles from the N. American parent and is quite distinct from the E. American and European material.
- Raising the Stakes: Cassava Seed Networks at Multiple Scales in Cambodia and Vietnam. Self-saved seed dominates, but not completely, with traders important especially in high-intensity cultivation areas.
- Knowledge and perception of pelung keepers’s toward chicken contests in West Java, Indonesia. In other news, Indonesia has singing contests for chickens.
Brainfood: Medicago sequencing, Barley GBS, Cowpea GBS, Yeast origins, Czech WTP, Seed storage, Functional phenomics, BXW control, Adoption, Dietary diversity, Modern wheat drawbacks, Maize & CC, Lekker lettuce, Wild Ipomoea sequenced, Asia crop history, Sustainable intensification
- Whole-genome landscape of Medicago truncatula symbiotic genes. There’s always something else.
- Genebank genomics highlights the diversity of a global barley collection. IPK’s, that is, and that’s 22,000 strong. Let the GWAS begin. Including for whisky-related traits, of course.
- A polyploid admixed origin of beer yeasts derived from European and Asian wine populations. And beer-related.
- Genetic diversity and population structure of a mini-core subset from the world cowpea (Vigna unguiculata (L.) Walp.) germplasm collection. There are three broadly geographic clusters, and the mini-core is representative of overall diversity, in Africa at least.
- Identification of candidate domestication‐related genes with a systematic survey of loss‐of‐function mutations. Fancy methods lead to doubling of possible domestication genes in soybean to 110.
- Social Valuation of Genebank Activities: Assessing Public Demand for Genetic Resource Conservation in the Czech Republic. Willingness to pay is $9 per sample. But this is unpacked in a guest post by Nik.
- Gene bank scheduling of seed regeneration: Interim report on a long term storage study. Maybe someone can tell me what’s new here?
- Functional phenomics: An emerging field integrating high-throughput phenotyping, physiology, and bioinformatics. Again, what exactly is new here, apart from the word pheme?
- Xanthomonas Wilt of Banana (BXW) in Central Africa: Opportunities, challenges, and pathways for citizen science and ICT-based control and prevention strategies. Technology is not enough.
- Beyond individuals: Toward a “distributed” approach to farmer decision‐making behavior. And even if it were enough, adoption is a whole ‘nother thing…
- Dietary Diversity: Implications for Obesity Prevention in Adult Populations: A Science Advisory From the American Heart Association. As currently defined, dietary diversity does not necessarily mean healthy eating.
- Modern Wheat Varieties as a Driver of the Degradation of Spanish Rainfed Mediterranean Agroecosystems throughout the 20th Century. Under traditional organic management, older varieties have similar yields to modern varieties, plus more biomass both above and below ground, making for better soils.
- Peculiarly pleasant weather for US maize. Adaptation to warmer climates accounts for 28% of yield increases since 1981. It won’t last, see below.
- Increase in crop losses to insect pests in a warming climate. Losses to insects will increase by 10 to 25% per degree Celsius of warming for wheat, rice, and maize.
- Metabolite variation in the lettuce gene pool: towards healthier crop varieties and food. Tasty lettuce is possible.
- Genome sequences of two diploid wild relatives of cultivated sweetpotato reveal targets for genetic improvement. Carotenoid biosynthesis alleles identified.
- Climate change stimulated agricultural innovation and exchange across Asia. Climate models suggest that about 3,500 years ago Central Asia and Tibet cooled, and 2,000 years ago China followed suit, in both cases leading to shifts in crops.
- Intensification for redesigned and sustainable agricultural systems. Depends on building social capital first.