Wild relatives

August 21, 2026August 17, 2026

Conserving the tangle of grapevines

I think we may have already pointed to Conservation gap analysis for wild grapevines (Vitis L.) of the Americas, the latest in a series of papers by our friend Colin Khoury and a rotating assortment of colleagues on the conservation status of the crop wild relatives of the Americas, genepool by genepool. The authors compiled occurrence records for 38 wild American grapevine taxa, and used fancy GIS to infer the overall distribution and environmental niche of each. They then assessed the degree of representation of each taxon in genebanks and protected areas, and hence any remaining conservation gaps. Here’s the headline finding:

We categorize 25 of 38 of the taxa as urgent priority and 10 as high priority for improving ex situ conservation representation. Three taxa are assessed as urgent and 29 as high priority for enhancing in situ conservation. Further action, with emphasis on conservation gap hotspots, is needed to more comprehensively conserve wild Vitis native to the Americas.

Which is pretty clear.

Or is it?

What if “taxa” are perhaps not always the best units of conservation to use in assessing conservation efforts?

That may in fact be one of the implications of a paper that came out just a few weeks after that of Colin and friends: The dynamics of introgression and parallel adaptation across North American Vitis species.

These authors show that introgression and hybridization are pervasive and evolutionarily important across North American Vitis, based on genomic analysis of 639 accessions representing 48 species. About 14% of the average genome shows evidence of introgression, particularly associated with areas where species come into contact. Some taxa usually regarded as hybrid species are in fact better understood as ever-changing hybrid swarms, rather than distinct evolutionary lineages. Most importantly, the authors find that introgressed genetic variants have repeatedly contributed to adaptation in different species. The paper therefore portrays Vitis diversity as a reticulate network — or tangle — of species, populations and gene flow, rather than a set of discrete species.

This has important implications for conservation: hybrid zones and admixed populations may be really significant reservoirs of adaptive diversity. The framework of the first paper might potentially underestimate the conservation importance of regions where these occur, if they contain substantial genetic variation but aren’t well represented by the taxonomic units used in the gap analysis. For example, it might happen that two neighbouring species are reasonably well represented ex situ, but not from the specific regions where they hybridize and introgression occurs.

This suggests a useful next, synthetic step: take the geographic gaps from the first paper and overlay them with the evidence for introgression and gene flow networks from the second. The resulting map could identify not just under-collected species, but under-collected (or under-conserved in situ) evolutionary processes and genetic mixtures. That could be valuable for designing the next Vitis collecting mission.

August 17, 2026August 17, 2026

Brainfood: Mung bean pan-genome, Sunflower resistance, Olive adaptation, Allergic peanuts, Weird coffees, Chinese tea, Measuring selection

Graph-based pan-genome reveals structural variations associated with agronomic traits in mung bean. Pan-genome captures extensive structural variation missed by a single reference genome, providing new targets for mung bean improvement.
Wild genes to the rescue: high-throughput genomics reveals the wild source of broomrape resistance in sunflower. Combining high-throughput root phenotyping with genomics identifies wild introgressions underlying broomrape resistance in sunflower and exposes valuable adaptive variation for breeding.
Genomic insights into the local adaptation of spontaneous olive trees in the Mediterranean Basin highlight the need for conservation planning in the face of global change. Genomics of wild West Mediterranean olive trees reveals patterns of local adaptation across temperature and rainfall gradients that it will be important to conserve as climates change.
Genetic regulation of major immunogenic protein accumulation in peanut seeds. Genomics provides targets for breeding peanuts with reduced allergenicity.
Genomic elucidation of hybridization between Liberica and excelsa coffee and its implications for coffee crop development. Genomics confirms that Liberica and excelsa coffee readily hybridize and produce fertile, genetically diverse offspring with intermediate agronomic traits, a possible source of diversity to broaden coffee’s climate resilience.
Simple sequence repeat (SSR) marker-based genetic diversity and population structure of large-leaf tea germplasm across four major tea-producing regions of Yunnan, China. Genomics of Yunnan’s large-leaf tea germplasm finds substantial genetic diversity but remarkably little regional differentiation, showing that seed propagation, natural crossing and human movement have maintained genetic connectivity across tea-growing regions.
Measuring maternal line selection driven by differential survival in ex situ collections for plant conservation. A new method distinguishes random mortality from selection among maternal lines in ex situ collections, offering conservationists a way to detect whether plant deaths are systematically eroding the genetic variation they are trying to preserve. And no genomics involved.

August 15, 2026August 16, 2026

The fruits of migration

As chance would have it, following my recent speculative foray into the possible connection between language and crop diversity, an essay by the great Andrea Wulf ¹ has just appeared that tells the story of how a remarkable German naturalist used breadfruit and linguistics to work out Polynesian migration patterns long before DNA or archaeology could confirm them.

George Forster sailed with his father aboard the HMS Resolution on Cook’s second voyage (1772-1775) and encountered breadfruit across the South Pacific. He noticed that the trees were seedless and could only be propagated by root cuttings. And also that there didn’t seem to be wild breadfruit trees anywhere in the islands. That meant every tree he saw, and there were many of them, had been deliberately planted by people.

Digging through the university library back in Göttingen, Forster later found that wild, seeded breadfruit with little flesh do exist, but in Southeast Asia. If the Pacific islands only had the improved, seedless types, he reasoned, they must have been carried there by people. That was proof both of sophisticated Polynesian plant management and of a migration route running from Southeast Asia eastward across the Pacific.

Forster combined this with careful attention to language. He deduced that most Pacific languages he encountered were dialects of a single root language, with small, systematic sound shifts. He and his father also charted how the presence of Malay loanwords decreased the farther east an island was located, which suggested that islands closer to Southeast Asia — the home of Malay — were settled earlier.

Where his fellow naturalist Joseph Banks saw the breadfruit purely as an economic resource (later lobbying to transplant it to the West Indies to feed enslaved plantation workers, hence HMS Bounty and all that), Forster saw it as historical and ethnographic evidence. That’s a strikingly different, more humanistic and — to me at least — more appealing way of reading a plant.

Wulf then jumps forward to modern archaeology and genetics, which broadly confirm Forster’s reconstruction. There was an initial human population in the region of Papua New Guinea dating back 45,000 years. This was followed by a second, Austronesian-speaking wave migrating out of Taiwan and thereabouts around 3,500 years ago. They travelled by the stars in “outrigger or double-hulled canoes loaded with hogs, chickens, root vegetables, coconuts, bananas, and breadfruit seedlings.” And they mixed with the descendants of the earlier wave through Melanesia. Their own descendants eventually reached Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, and, much later, Tahiti, Hawaii, Easter Island and New Zealand.

The essay closes by tying this to Tongan historian Epeli Hau’ofa’s idea of “Oceania” — the Pacific not as scattered, isolated islands, lost in a vast ocean, but as one interconnected “sea of islands.” Exactly what Forster intuited two centuries before it became conventional wisdom.

We’ve blogged a lot about breadfruit over the years. Check out the archive. And in particular listen to the recently-retired Dr Diane Ragone describe her 40-year journey to understand this remarkable tree.

August 7, 2026August 7, 2026

Nibbles: Cambridge genebank job, Grapevine roundup, PlantSearch-Accessions, India agrobiodiversity roadmap

Cambridge University Botanic Garden is looking for a Seed Bank Coordinator, with applications closing on 16 August.
Our friend Colin Khoury at the New York Botanical Garden explores the remarkable diversity, evolution and cultural significance of grapevines, highlighting why these climbing plants deserve more attention.
BGCI releases a major update to PlantSearch, expanding access to accession-level data from botanic garden collections worldwide.
India’s National Advisory Board on Management of Genetic Resources outlines a roadmap to strengthen the conservation and sustainable use of the country’s agrobiodiversity. Hopefully botanical gardens are included.

July 14, 2026July 14, 2026

Nibbles: Apple-banana paradox, Genebanks, Indian wheat, Indian wild rice, Kenya community seed banks, Wild coffee, Macadamia history, Taro research, Cacti

Why the modern food system prizes uniformity even though resilience depends on diversity. Spoiler alert: follow the money.
Historic crop varieties are finding renewed relevance as farmers contend with more volatile weather, emerging pests and changing markets. Let’s hope there’s money to conserve them.
India’s traditional wheat varieties contain diversity that could help breeders develop crops better able to withstand heat and drought. Let’s hope there’s money to conserve them.
India announces significant progress in conserving its wild rice genetic resources. Great that there was money to conserve them.
Community seed banks across Kenya are calling for formal recognition and sustained support, arguing that locally managed collections strengthen seed sovereignty, preserve traditional varieties and help farming communities adapt to climate change. Yes, but are they enough without national genebanks?
Researchers are racing to conserve wild coffee species whose genetic diversity may provide the resistance and resilience needed to secure tomorrow’s morning cup. Is the industry contributing, though ?
New history of the macadamia traces its remarkable journey from Australia’s native forests to a global crop, while underscoring why conserving the remaining wild populations is essential for the crop’s long-term future.
Researchers at the University of the South Pacific investigate how taro can withstand climate change, combining research with conservation to help protect one of the region’s most culturally and nutritionally important staple crops.
Chester Zoo collects seeds from highly threatened cacti, because why not?