Wild relatives

September 22, 2018September 23, 2018

First Annual Crop Wild Relatives Week kicks off

That’s thanks to the Crop Science Society of America.

The Crop Science Society of America is proud to host Crop Wild Relatives Week on September 22 – 29, 2018, to celebrate the contribution that these humble and hearty plants have made to increasing food security around the world. The collections of plants; the work being done to collect, conserve, characterize, and use them; and the importance of continuing to do so will be highlighted in blogs, web stories, and infographics. Online resources for anyone interested in learning more crop wild relatives can be found (https://www.crops.org/crop-wild-relative). In addition, new stories and resources will be added to the site on an ongoing basis, including educational materials for educators and parents of K-12 kids, our future scientists.

Let the fun begin!

September 19, 2018September 20, 2018

Nibbles: Transformation, Restoration, Renumeration, Validation, Mensuration, Celebration, Visualization, Diversification, Fructification, Information, Fermentation, Sustentation, Association, Migration, Transformation, Microconservation

Lawrence Haddad on how to start transforming the food system.
Here’s an idea: CIMMYT genebank recognized for restoring agricultural diversity in Guatemala.
And another. Cash transfers are better than more conventional interventions for malnutrition, but they have to be real money.
But, of course, they don’t always work. That’s one of many development myths listed in this fun Twitter thread.
We also need metrics, sure, but the right ones, and we may already have them.
The first ecologist remembered. That would be Humboldt.
Terrible visualizations of the changing geography of American agriculture.
But where are heirloom grown? Rice, say?
And where are all the pomegranate farmers?
I’m sure there are plenty of grape maps of France somewhere. But what’s with all these varieties? And are there more than in pomegranate?
IUCN launches a new Red List website.
Laos launches a sort of Red List website on traditional foods. Here it is. No word on linkages with Ark of Taste.
Belgian lambic beer threatened by climate change. Now it’s personal.
In Italy, the landscape needs people to keep it safe.
Even olive landscapes, which maybe need to be more promiscuous.
Early agricultural migrations fuelled by cheese.
Early eggplant migrations fuelled by elephants.
Microbes to the rescue.

September 10, 2018September 11, 2018

Brainfood: Campesino maize, DELLA proteins, CC response, Nematodes, Collection duplication, Epidemics

Evolutionary and food supply implications of ongoing maize domestication by Mexican campesinos. Effective population of 500 million plants potentially feeds 50 million people.
Modulating plant growth–metabolism coordination for sustainable agriculture. Short AND sweet.
Cracking the Code of Biodiversity Responses to Past Climate Change. Quite a bit of adaptation, not just migration and extinction.
Plant-Parasitic Nematodes and Food Security in Sub-Saharan Africa. The greatest biotic threat to productivity on the continent, and probably going to get worse.
Efficient curation of genebanks using next-generation sequencing reveals substantial duplication of germplasm accessions. Out of 1143 accessions of a wild wheat in 3 collections, 564 are unique.
Emerging plant disease epidemics: Biological research is key but not enough. Not just about the money.

September 5, 2018

Nibbles: Farm subsidies, Pressing and naming plants, Cowpea primer, California crop maps, Caribbean mangoes, ABS meeting, Banana mapping, Sarada Krishnan, Indian millets, Apple varieties, Early modern bees

Fun Twitter thread on zombie tropes about farm subsidies in the US. Should have been a blog post, though.
Kew boffins on how to make an herbarium specimen. More complicated than you might think. And why it’s important. While I’m at it, this is how you use herbarium specimens etc. to name plants.
IITA genebank manager interviewed about cowpea.
Everything you ever wanted to know about the history of cartography. Not very relevant here, I know, but a monumental achievement that I wanted to celebrate. And here’s a wonderful example of cutting-edge online cartography that will no doubt feature in a future edition.
The banana mapping project is progressing nicely.
Damn, I missed the St Lucia mango festival. Next year?
Africa discusses ABS.
Dr Sarada Krishnan of Denver Botanic Garden profiled. She worked on the global coffee conservation strategy. Among many other things.
Millets to the rescue in Gujarat.
Red Delicious bumped from top apple spot.
Amateurs have spread information about beekeeping since 16th century.

September 4, 2018September 7, 2018

Brainfood: Quinoa boom, Diet affordability, Insect boom and bust, Organic & pests, Maize agroforestry, Landraces, Wheat roots, Conservation costs, Sustainable intensification, Defences & domestication, Polyploid niches, Mexican CWR, Danish apples, Diversity proxies, Grassland nutrient hotspots

Foods and fads: The welfare impacts of rising quinoa prices in Peru. Modest.
Measuring the Affordability of Nutritious Diets in Africa: Price Indexes for Diet Diversity and the Cost of Nutrient Adequacy. Maybe they could try quinoa.
Impacts of climate warming on terrestrial ectotherms across latitude. Insects are in trouble in the tropics, but will make up for it at higher latitudes, which will be really bad for crops there, 10-25% more bad.
Evidence that organic farming promotes pest control. Something for farmers in those higher latitudes to think about.
The global distribution of Bacillus anthracis and associated anthrax risk to humans, livestock, and wildlife. 63.8 million rural poor livestock keepers are at risk. No word on effect of climate change.
Do open-pollinated maize varieties perform better than hybrids in agroforestry systems? Maybe in Rwanda, but in Ethiopia not so much.
More than Yield: Ecosystem Services of Traditional versus Modern Crop Varieties Revisited. Landraces are liked for yield stability in marginal environments, and for cultural reasons.
Root and shoot traits in parental, early and late generation Green Revolution wheats (Triticum spp.) under glasshouse conditions. Modern wheat have smaller roots.
Standardized reporting of the costs of management interventions for biodiversity conservation. Behind a paywall, so can’t tell whether includes genebanks. But I bet it doesn’t. Tell me I’m wrong.
Global assessment of agricultural system redesign for sustainable intensification. Apparently 30% of farms and 10% of agricultural land worldwide, which is both more and less than I would have guessed.
Genetic homogeneity of North-African goats. The Berber breeds are different, everything else is a big mixed up mess.
Plant domestication decreases both constitutive and induced chemical defences by direct selection against defensive traits. In cabbage, even the tissues that are not eaten are more edible than in the wild relative.
Polyploid plants have faster rates of multivariate climatic niche evolution than their diploid relatives. Relevant for domestication?
An Initiative for the Study and Use of Genetic Diversity of Domesticated Plants and Their Wild Relatives. In Mexico.
Population structure, relatedness and ploidy levels in an apple gene bank revealed through genotyping-by-sequencing. There’s a lot of inter-relatedness in the Danish collection.
Biases induced by using geography and environment to guide ex situ conservation. “Although geographic and environmental diversity have proven to be reliable predictors of allele frequency differences and ecotypic differentiation across species ranges, they appear to be poor predictors of allelic diversity per se.” At least for 3 species.
Examining the spectra of herbarium uses and users. Herbaria mostly used by taxonomists shock.
Ancient herders enriched and restructured African grasslands. Shit. You heard me.