- Dr Fiona Hay, seed scientist, on why we need genebanks.
- Prof. Richard Ellis retires. A genebank legend, as Fiona would probably agree.
- FAO exhibition goes From Seeds to Foods. By way of genebanks, no doubt.
- And peasants, of course. No, it’s not a derogatory word, settle down.
- Can Green Revolution breeding approaches (and genebanks) help peasants deal with climate change?
- Even genebanks need a back-up plan though.
- New Mexico genebank helps out Danish chef.
- The history of the Concord grape and its foxiness. Chefs intrigued.
- The history of Aport and Amasya apples. No foxiness involved, as far as I know. Genebanks? Probably.
- The origin of caffeine. Now do foxiness.
- Where did collards come from anyway? No, not genebanks. Bloody historians, always re-writing history.
Brainfood: Breeding edition
- Unlocking the potential of wild rice to bring missing nutrition to elite grains. A solution for better nutrition.
- Characterization of Oryza glaberrima derived genetic resources for stagnant flooding tolerance in interspecific rice pre-breeding populations. A solution for too much water.
- Strengthening Global Rice Germplasm Sharing: Insights from the INGER Platform. A solution for getting the above solutions out to those who need them.
- Comprehensive nutritional and antinutritional characterization of pigeonpea (Cajanus cajan): Insights into genotypic diversity and protein quality. A solution for better protein.
- Exploring the agro-morphological performance of mini core collection of finger millet [Eleusine coracana (L.) Gaertn] germplasm under sodic condition. A solution for high sodium in soils.
- A Public Private Partnership in Plant Breeding — The Case of Irish Malting Barley. A solution for Irish malt.
- The business case for grasspea in Ethiopia: An action plan to provide Ethiopian farmers with a safe, nutritious and climate-smart protein source. A solution for ODAP. Which will still need to be sold, though.
- Harnessing historical genebank data to accelerate pea breeding. A solution for cold, and more.
- Genetic basis of phenotypic diversity in C. stenophylla: a stepping stone for climate-adapted coffee cultivar development. A solution for heat.
- A phylogenetic approach to prioritising crop wild relatives in Brassiceae (Brassicaceae) for breeding applications. A solution for finding solutions.
Brainfood: Taxonomic identification, Niche mapping, Harvest tracking, Drones, Phenomics, Yield analysis
- Review of herbarium plant identification of crop wild relatives using convolutional neural network models. Cool tech helps you figure out which species is which. Now you can map them properly I guess.
- Habitat prediction mapping for prioritizing germplasm collection areas of cowpea (Vigna unguiculata (L.) Walp) in India using BioClim model. Having mapped them, another cool tech helps you figure out where to collect them.
- Harvest Date Monitoring in Cereal Fields at Large Scale Using Dense Stacks of Sentinel-2 Imagery Validated by Real Time Kinematic Positioning Data. And when.
- Drone methods and educational resources for plant science and agriculture. In the field, cool tech could help you find and collect them. And not just that…
- Foliar disease resistance phenomics of fungal pathogens: image-based approaches for mapping quantitative resistance in cereal germplasm. Having collected them, more cool tech helps you evaluate them.
- Machine learning reveals drivers of yield sustainability in five decades of continuous rice cropping. Finally, having evaluated them over many years, cool tech helps you figure out what’s going on.
Nibbles: Supermarkets, Cate Blanchett, ABS, Transformation, Medieval haymaking, Aurochs rewilding, Breed concept
- What’s wrong with supermarkets.
- Cate Blanchett on the Millennium Seed Bank. Attitude to supermarkets unknown.
- Access & Benefit Sharing 101. Cate Blanchett unavailable for comment.
- Experts weigh in on how we should change how we eat. Nobody but Cate Blanchett will listen, but supermarkets and seeds feature, for what it’s worth.
- How they ate in the Middle Ages without supermarkets. Or at least harvested.
- After we’re done with medieval haymaking, let’s bring back the aurochs too. And put it in a supermarket?
- Yeah but what is a breed anyway? Or an aurochs, for that matter.
Brainfood: Core collections of…durum, deulkkae, barnyard millet, durian, sesame, flax, Fendler’s horsenettle, jute mallow, barley
- Creation of a core set of durum wheat accessions based on agro-morphological traits with maximum diversity and lower redundancy. From 710 to 13 accessions (2%!) using 32 morphological traits, thanks to Power Core.
- Construction of a core collection of Perilla frutescens (L.) Britton Germplasm in the South Korean gene bank using agro-morphological traits. From 1227 to 235 accessions (19%) using 17 morphological traits, thanks to a bunch of different methods.
- Comprehensive Phenotyping of 1,807 Indian Barnyard Millet (Echinochloa frumentacea Link) Accessions from Indian National Genebank: Unlocking Diversity for Core Set Development. From 1,807 to 271 accessions (15%) using 23 quantitative traits, thanks to Core Hunter 3.
- Genomic resequencing reveals genetic diversity, population structure, and core collection of durian germplasm. From 114 to 26 accessions (23%) using 39 million high-quality SNPs across the genome.
- Development of a composite core collection from 5,856 sesame accessions being conserved in the Indian National Genebank. From 5,856 to 1,768 accessions (30%) using SNPs and phenotypic data.
- Optimizing core collections for genetic studies: a worldwide flax germplasm case study. From 1,593 to 350 accessions (22%) using phenotypic and genotypic data, times 200, thanks to CoreCollection, corehunter III, TrainSel, and more.
- An Optimized Core Sample of the Wild Potato Solanum fendleri in the USA. From 269 accessions, to 38 plants, to 1 accession (0.4%!). Beat that!
- Countrywide Corchorus olitorius L. core collection shows an adaptive potential for future climate in Benin. From 305 to 54 accessions (18%) using 1,114 high-quality SNPs, thanks to ShinyCore. Some indication of usefulness.
- Multi-environmental evaluation of barley core collection against spot blotch for genetic variability and identification of promising genotypes exhibiting resistance. From a core collection of 678 accessions to 2 genotypes that might actually be useful to breeders. Finally!