- Prof. Brian Cox presents “Feeding the Future,” and it’s not entirely about GMOs. Worth sitting through the whole thing.
- Did we say that Cary Fowler recently received the Frank N. Meyer Medal for Plant Genetic Resources? This is what he had to say on a different recent occasion.
- Want to adopt a coffee seed? Kew will let you give a really cool Christmas gift.
- Or you could buy some Ethiopian coffee.
- Speaking of Christmas gifts…
- CIAT’s bean diversity collection gets its 15 minutes of fame. And ICARDA’s chickpea collection is not far behind.
- More on “open source seeds.”
- Mobilizing the green gold of plant genetic resources: maybe if they were open source…
- Not just green, though, right? Veggies come in all sorts of colours.
- Brexit may do for Wensleydale. I knew there must be a silver lining.
Nibbles: Dog evolution, Horse evolution, African cassava, Jackfruit, Fairtrade quinoa, Editing tomatoes
- Tibetan mastiff precursor got busy with wolves.
- Very few stallions are responsible for domestic horses.
- Workshop on getting the most out of cassava in central Africa. But are they talking about collections?
- Jackfruit is allright.
- Fairtrade keeps youngsters on the (quinoa) farm. But for how long?
- Tweaking tomatoes through gene editing.
Nibbles: Diversification, Street food, Forest genetic units, Citrus greening, COP22 roundup, Australian breeding, Temperate Orchard Society, Quinoa conference
- Diversifying crop production for the SDGs: the view from AVRDC.
- Local bread, in India and Istanbul.
- Foresters get all genetic.
- Winning the battle against citrus greening in Florida.
- Yeah, so what happened in Marrakech?
- Do chickpeas really have the nutritional value of cardboard?
- An apple genebank a day…
- Drawing the International Year of Quinoa to a decorous close.
Brainfood: Food diversity, Vigna salt tolerance, Medicinal rice, Sustainable intensification, US wild potatoes, Ethiopian potatoes, Temperate rice, Brazilian maize, Soybean cores, Pea cores, Danish cattle viability
- On-Farm Crop Species Richness Is Associated with Household Diet Diversity and Quality in Subsistence- and Market-Oriented Farming Households in Malawi. Correlation is not causation, but one gets one’s victories where one can.
- Agroecology and healthy food systems in semi-humid tropical Africa: Participatory research with vulnerable farming households in Malawi. See above.
- Diversity and Evolution of Salt Tolerance in the Genus Vigna. Salt tolerance has evolved at least 4 times in the genus among coastal species.
- An ethnobotanical study of traditional rice landraces (Oryza sativa L.) used for medical treatment in selected local communities of the Philippines. 19 landraces are used to treat a variety of nutritional and other complaints.
- Is it time for a socio-ecological revolution in agriculture? Sustainable intensification is often neither.
- Core Collections of Potato (Solanum) Species Native to the USA. Only two species, but more collecting needed, though one population of one of the species captures 82% of total AFLP bands. In other news, people still using AFLPs.
- Genetic Diversity and Relationship of Ethiopian Potato Varieties to Germplasm from North America, Europe and the International Potato Center. 15 unique Ethiopian genotypes reflects 2 distinct introductions from Europe.
- Genetic Diversity and Population Structure of Rice Varieties Cultivated in Temperate Regions. 217 varieties from temperate regions show much diversity, structured by grain type and origin.
- Genetic Vulnerability and the Relationship of Commercial Germplasms of Maize in Brazil with the Nested Association Mapping Parents. Brazilian commercial maize hybrids are pretty diverse, but show little overlap with the diversity of the NAM parents.
- Evaluation of resistance to Phytophthora sojae in soybean mini core collections using an improved assay system. Resistant materials made up about a third of the world mini-core, but <10% of the Japanese mini-core.
- Genetic Diversity of Chinese and Global Pea (Pisum sativum L.) Collections. The USDA global core was more diverse than the Chinese core, which was pretty diverse anyway.
- Population viability analysis on a native Danish cattle breed. Jutland cattle has 122 years if nothing is done, but things can be done.
Brainfood: Mate diversity, Species recovery, CC & food, Microbial collections, Chickpea roots, African flora, Bitter gourd diversity, Wild yeast, Cryo double
- Genetic and phytochemical analysis to evaluate the diversity and relationships of mate (Ilex paraguariensis A. St.-Hil.) elite genetic resources in a germplasm collection. Some have low caffeine, which makes them especially useless.
- Genetic factors in threatened species recovery plans on three continents. Are ignored more often than you’d think.
- Climate Change and Food Systems Research: Current Trends and Future Directions. Current research on the effects of climate change on food systems doesn’t pay enough attention to the fact that food production is indeed a system, varies regionally and depends on political structures.
- World data centre for microorganisms: an information infrastructure to explore and utilize preserved microbial strains worldwide. All you need to know about 708 culture collections from 72 countries and >368,000 strains on one website.
- Characterising root trait variability in chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) germplasm. Core collection of 270 reveals 3 main groups based on root architecture in hydroponics.
- RAINBIO: a mega-database of tropical African vascular plants distributions. Who will fillet out the CWR species?
- Genetic Variability for Yield and Nutritional Quality in Yam Bean (Pachyrhizus sp.). Can’t access the high dry matter material? No problem.
- Diversity Among a Wide Asian Collection of Bitter Gourd Landraces and their Genetic Relationships with Commercial Hybrid Cultivars. 114 accessions fall into 5 geographic groups based on SSRs. Commercial cultivars are all very similar.
- Yeast biodiversity from Vitis vinifera L., subsp. sylvestris (Gmelin) Hegi to face up the oenological consequences of climate change. Yeasts from wild grapes will save our wine. Look, I’ll take anything.
- The Potato Cryobank at the International Potato Center (CIP): A Model for Long Term Conservation of Clonal Plant Genetic Resources Collections of the Future. 70% of over 1000 accessions are considered successfully cryoconserved.
- Probabilistic viability calculations for cryopreserving vegetatively propagated collections in genebanks. Were these used in the above?