Vegetables – Page 72 – Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

April 3, 2017April 10, 2017

Never rains but it pours, genebank edition

If running the genebank at the John Innes Institute in the UK is too tame for you, why not check out the job at WorldVeg:

WorldVeg is seeking a highly motivated and experienced Genebank Manager to manage the conservation of the Center’s vegetable germplasm, to lead and conduct research on vegetable genetic resources of both global and traditional crops in collaboration with WorldVeg scientists and partners around the world to assure the safety and duplication of the collection, and to ensure the genetic resources are utilized effectively to benefit the poor in developing countries.

You’d also get to play around with a nifty demonstration garden.

April 3, 2017April 10, 2017

Brainfood: Banana identification, Donkey domestication, Mouse domestication, African cattle, Pig domestication, Biofuels, Biofortification, Genomics for breeding, Species movement, Crop diversity double, N fixation, Ag commercialization models, Wild beans, Brassica domestication, Teaching biodiversity

Molecular and cytological characterization of the global Musa germplasm collection provides insights into the treasure of banana diversity. 16% of 1500 accessions need taxonomic verification. Could have been much worse.
Why the Donkey Did Not Go South: Disease as a Constraint on the Spread of Equus asinus into Southern Africa. Gap in distribution between Kenya and southern Africa until colonial times probably down to trypanosomiasis.
Origins of house mice in ecological niches created by settled hunter-gatherers in the Levant 15,000 y ago. Hunter gatherers inadvertently domesticated the mouse.
The genome landscape of indigenous African cattle. Now we know where the genes for heat tolerance and tick resistance can be found, and it’s where you’d think.
Insights into early pig domestication provided by ancient DNA analysis. In northern Europe, around 4000 BC, people started crossing pigs from the south with local wild boars. What were they thinking?
Recent grassland losses are concentrated around U.S. ethanol refineries. The revenge of geography.
Provitamin A biofortification of crop plants: a gold rush with many miners. “One crucial aspect that needs further experimentation is whether β-carotene-fortified crops can improve vitamin A status in the main targets of the biofortification efforts, that is, malnourished adults and children.” Just going to leave that out there.
Genomic innovation for crop improvement. Longer reads needed. Is there no satisfying these gene-jockeys?
Biodiversity redistribution under climate change: Impacts on ecosystems and human well-being. Species movements affect ecosystem functioning and service provision: “The indirect effects of climate change on food webs are also expected to compound the direct effects on crops.”
Feeding the Household, Growing the Business, or Just Showing Off? Farmers’ Motivations for Crop Diversity Choices in Papua New Guinea. Some people grow lots of crops because it’s cool. But why wasn’t this done at the intraspecific level?
To Specialize or Diversify: Agricultural Diversity and Poverty Dynamics in Ethiopia. Forget coolness, crop diversity makes you less poor.
Biogeography of nodulated legumes and their nitrogen-fixing symbionts. Australia is weird.
Plantations, outgrowers and commercial farming in Africa: agricultural commercialisation and implications for agrarian change. They all have their place.
Genomic history of the origin and domestication of common bean unveils its closest sister species. Wild populations from northern Peru and Ecuador are not derived from wild Phaseolus vulgaris which migrated there from Mesoamerica but are actually a different species which predates the evolution of wild common bean.
Genomic inferences of domestication events are corroborated by written records in Brassica rapa. Five genetic groups, with rapini at the base.
Walking and talking the tree of life: Why and how to teach about biodiversity. Forget ranks, try clades.

March 13, 2017March 15, 2017

Brainfood: Hot pepper double, Tibetan chickens, Watermelon diversity, Sunflower accessions, CWR meh, E Africa early ag, Pristine myth, African deforestation

Screening old peppers (Capsicum spp.) for disease resistance and pungency-related traits. Resistance does not correlate with geography within an Andean collection.
Bioactive Compound Variability in a Brazilian Capsicum Pepper Collection. No accession is high in everything.
Genetic evidence from mitochondrial DNA corroborates the origin of Tibetan chickens. That is, the surrounding regions.
Morphological and genetic diversity analysis of Citrullus landraces from India and their genetic inter relationship with continental watermelons. Modern cultivars are homogeneous.
Molecular diversity of sunflower populations maintained as genetic resources is affected by multiplication processes and breeding for major traits. Multiplication slightly reduces within-accession diversity. Well, in France anyway.
Past and Future Use of Wild Relatives in Crop Breeding. Yada yada.
Subsistence mosaics, forager-farmer interactions, and the transition to food production in eastern Africa. The transition to agriculture in E Africa was more than just the Bantu expansion.
Persistent effects of pre-Columbian plant domestication on Amazonian forest composition. Domesticated species are more common around archaeological sites. Sounds like agriculture is not much more than the Arawakan and Tupí expansions.
Human population growth offsets climate-driven increase in woody vegetation in sub-Saharan Africa. In some places climate change has positive effects, but these are swamped where there is high population growth.

March 9, 2017March 9, 2017

Nibbles: Amazon conservation, Radiation breeding, Chocomuseum, Biodiversity survey, Robot phenotyping, C4F, Sheepish

The latest on the Pristine Myth of the Amazon. And how to protect it.
Rice going nuclear in Bangladesh.
NYC gets a chocolate museum.
What is biodiversity? Answers on a postcard, please…
Maybe robots can help with that.
Crops for the Future gets the Virginia Gewin treatment.
Sheep domestication in half a page.

February 20, 2017February 20, 2017

Brainfood: Potato changes, Anti-carcinogenic kava, Horizontal barley, Genebank use, Lotus diversity, Rubber soul, CWR breeding, Andean PGR, Distribution modelling

Genetic diversity of Bolivian wild potato germplasm: changes during ex situ conservation management and comparisons with resampled in situ populations. It’s all a bit of a lottery.
Traditional preparations of kava (Piper methysticum) inhibit the growth of human colon cancer cells in vitro. Still tastes like crap, though.
Multiple horizontal transfers of nuclear ribosomal genes between phylogenetically distinct grass lineages. 9 independent instances of non-sexual panicoid introgression into wild barley species.
Who is sowing our seeds? A systematic review of the use of plant genetic resources in research. Ahem, researchers? Study of the UK Vegetable Genebank.
Evaluation of Lotus corniculatus L. accessions from different locations at different altitudes reveals phenotypic and genetic diversity. Phenotype could be the same, and genotype still be different.
De novo hybrid assembly of the rubber tree genome reveals evidence of paleotetraploidy in Hevea species. Which happened before Hevea and Manihot diverged.
Potential Uses of Wild Germplasms of Grain Legumes for Crop Improvement. “A big international effort is underway with the aim to adapt agriculture to climate change, which includes collecting, protecting and preparing crop wild relatives. Several pulses are among the major targets: common bean, adzuki bean, chickpea, cowpea, faba bean, groundnut, lentil, lima bean, mung bean, pea, pigeonpea, soybean, urd bean and vetch [197,198]. The information generated and systematized from this project certainly will be a unique source of information and materials facing the current and futures challenges for agriculture in the context of crop wild relatives use.” How sweet.
Assessing the Benefits of Andean Crop Diversity on Farmers’ Livelihood: Insights from a Development Programme in Bolivia and Peru. Private benefits can incentivize public ones.
Modelling of species distributions, range dynamics and communities under imperfect detection: advances, challenges and opportunities. Beyond mere presence.