- Trees are good for African farmers.
- A basic universal income for people in biodiversity hotspots. Agrobiodiversity hotspots too?
- Coconut History 101.
- 30 years of bananas in Belgium.
- Eat up all your fiddleheads.
- Hybrid wheat is coming at last.
- Ed Buckler wins big. Unclear if he’ll be allowed to tweet about it.
- Nonsense piece on the ITPGRFA.
Brainfood: Wild peanuts, Salt-tolerance, Melon diversity, Consumption & biodiversity, German veggie fanciers, Oh oh oomycetes, Miscanthus diversity, Urban pollinators, Milpa bees
- Genomic characterisation of Arachis porphyrocalyx (Valls & C.E. Simpson, 2005) (Leguminosae): multiple origin of Arachis species with x=9. At least two distinct origins for the x=9 species.
- Salt Tolerant Varieties: A Biological Intervention to Manage Saline and Sodic Environment and Sustain Livelihoods. Salt-tolerant rice and wheat varieties are being adopted where needed in this bit of Haryana, but not as much as they could be.
- Genotyping-by-sequencing of a melon (Cucumis melo L.) germplasm collection from a secondary center of diversity highlights patterns of genetic variation and genomic features of different gene pools. Three subgroups, and that’s just in Puglia, the heel bit of Italy.
- Quantifying biodiversity losses due to human consumption: a global-scale footprint analysis. Food consumption is the single greatest driver of biodiversity loss, somewhere else.
- Old vegetable varieties: attitude, consumption behaviour and knowledge of German consumers. There’s a consumer segment in Germany that could be labelled “fanciers of old vegetable varieties,” apparently.
- Emerging oomycete threats to plants and animals. Be afraid.
- Ecological characteristics and in situ genetic associations for yield-component traits of wild Miscanthus from eastern Russia. Arctic sugarcane? It could happen.
- The city as a refuge for insect pollinators. It could happen.
- Sweat bees on hot chillies: provision of pollination services by native bees in traditional slash-and-burn agriculture in the Yucatán Peninsula of tropical Mexico. The milpa is pretty good refuge for bees already.
Brainfood: CO2 & domestication, Amaranth double, Nordic apple double, Chinese alfalfa, Sheep double, Moroccan lentils, SE Asian veggies, Cattle relative
- Yield responses of wild C3 and C4 crop progenitors to subambient CO2: a test for the role of CO2 limitation in the origin of agriculture. It was tough for CWR in the last glacial period, better afterwards.
- Analysis of phylogenetic relationships and genome size evolution of the Amaranthus genus using GBS indicates the ancestors of an ancient crop. Three cultivated species derived from one wild relative in different geographic regions.
- Genomic and phenotypic evidence for an incomplete domestication of South American grain amaranth (Amaranthus caudatus). Maybe because of continued geneflow with the CWR.
- Unravelling genetic diversity and cultivar parentage in the Danish apple gene bank collection. Only 10% duplicates among 448 accessions, many unique.
- Redundancies and Genetic Structure among ex situ Apple Collections in Norway Examined with Microsatellite Markers. 14 synonyms among 181 accessions. No word on the overlap between Danish and Norwegian collections.
- The Current Status, Problems, and Prospects of Alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) Breeding in China. 77 registered cultivars for the whole of China seems very few.
- Assessment of genetic diversity and structure of major sheep breeds from Pakistan. They cluster based on use rather than geographic origin.
- Mapping molecular diversity of indigenous goat genetic resources of Asia. Chinese goats are different.
- On-farm Conservation of Zaer Lentil Landrace in Context of Climate Change and Improved Varieties Competition. People like everything about the landrace except its yield.
- Conservation of Indigenous Vegetables from a Hotspot in Tropical Asia: What Did We Learn from Vavilov? Not much, it seems.
- Assessment of genetic diversity of Mithun (Bos frontalis) population in Bhutan using microsatellite DNA markers. Also known as gayal.
Nibbles: Catching up edition
- And we’re back.
- India wants to set up a fish genebank. Because climate change, which is scrambling up climates everywhere. And fish are important, so don’t scoff.
- Nepal’s community seed banks in the news. Also Brazil’s. And New Zealand’s, since we’re at it.
- Don’t forget India’s. And not just the community sort, either.
- Our friends at Kew on the wonders of genebanks.
- Someone mention genebanks? Latest photos from Ft Collins.
- You can make your own. Genebank, that is.
- Podcast on a really long-term seed viability experiment.
- It’s not just about the genebanks, though. Or all that biotechnology for that matter. Indeed not, as iPES-Food reminds us.
- Italian monks help rebuild earthquake-hit town. With beer.
- French monks are at it too. Beer, that is.
- Go ahead, have that piece of cheese with that monk-brewed beer.
- Or with a nice IPA for that matter.
- Or a banana beer.
- Sure, take all the romance out of beer, why don’t you.
- The Mesoamerican, entomological roots of the colour scarlet.
- Don’t keep people out if you want to protect forests. I can’t understand why this still needs to be said.
- The story of the quest for super-sweet corn. And a celebration of the life of a giant of corn (as in maize) research.
- And for the “ultimate” avocado.
- How about ultimate dope?
- The traditional, end-of-year, save-the-apple and the-end-of-frankincense stories. Actually there were two on apples. And it’s not all bad news for frankincense.
- Saving the Tamworth pig in Australia. And the camel in Rajasthan.
- Cool map of French traditional foods.
- For your next Saturnalia feast.
- The Met has a “corne field.”
- Earliest evidence of potatoes from the central Andes. What, not Canada?
- Neolithic hunter-gatherers of the Libyan Sahara liked their veggies. Which we all should. But not at these prices. Ah, wait, though, is the melon a vegetable, or a fruit?
- Some crops come, some go.
- Which seems a good place to bring this first, gigantic Nibble of 2017 to a close. Did you miss us? I know you did. But did we miss anything over the holidays? Let us know.
Brainfood: Rucola, PGR history, Camels & CC, Quality seed, Co-evolution, Dormancy
- Changes in rocket salad phytochemicals within the commercial supply chain: Glucosinolates, isothiocyanates, amino acids and bacterial load increase significantly after processing. Sitting around is good for rucola’s nutritional value.
- From “Genetic Resources” to “Ecosystems Services”: A Century of Science and Global Policies for Crop Diversity Conservation. Not just stuff to mine.
- Camels and Climate Resilience: Adaptation in Northern Kenya. Increasing focus on camel herding a reasonable climate resilience strategy, but only under some scenarios, for some communities. And what is it doing to diversity?
- A review of factors that influence the production of quality seed for long-term conservation in genebanks. What’s best for commercial seed production is not necessarily best for long-term conservation. Though it won’t hurt.
- The eco-evolutionary impacts of domestication and agricultural practices on wild species. Agriculture (plant breeding, agricultural practices and gene flow with crops) can have evolutionary consequences for wild species that undermine the success of agriculture.
- Multiple alleles at a single locus control seed dormancy in Swedish Arabidopsis. Careful with that GWAS!