Wild relatives

August 9, 2018July 17, 2019

N-fixing maize goop

The news that a maize landrace has been found to fix atmospheric nitrogen because of microbes growing in gunk on its aerial roots has been getting a lot of traction. Understandably. The best take on it I’ve come across is this Twitter thread from Dr Sarah Taber:

https://twitter.com/sarahtaber_bww/status/1027388643973812224?s=21

August 7, 2018August 8, 2018

A focus on West Africa

A paper just out on the domestication of pearl millet gives me the chance to acknowledge the terrific amount of work on domestication of West African crops going on in Yves Vigouroux‘s lab.

August 6, 2018August 6, 2018

Brainfood: Ecology of domestication, Citizen soybeans, Silkworm domestication, Barley spread, Indigenous management, Maize domestication, Temperate maize, Nutrient yields, Amazon history double, Women & diets, Online classification, Charred breadcrumbs, Wheat drought

Crop domestication: anthropogenic effects on insect–plant interactions in agroecosystems. Domestication can upset trophic webs. Poor dears.
The soybean experiment ‘1000 Gardens’: a case study of citizen science for research, education, and beyond. 2492 gardens, in fact.
The evolutionary road from wild moth to domestic silkworm. Domestication in China, followed by multiple independent spreads and differentiation.
Barley heads east: Genetic analyses reveal routes of spread through diverse Eurasian landscapes. 3 taxa, 8 genepools, multiple routes for spread. A bit like silkworm but in the opposite direction.
A spatial overview of the global importance of Indigenous lands for conservation. 40% of all terrestrial protected areas.
Maize domestication and gene interaction. More than just the headline 5 genes.
Hallauer’s Tusón: a decade of selection for tropical-to-temperate phenological adaptation in maize. Need to go back to tropical germplasm for adaptation to temperate conditions.
Moving beyond calories and protein: Micronutrient assessment of UK diets and land use. Roots, tubers and vegetables are the most land-efficient producers of 23 nutrients.
The legacy of 4,500 years of polyculture agroforestry in the eastern Amazon. It is still with us.
Direct archaeological evidence for Southwestern Amazonia as an early plant domestication and food production centre. And not just in the east.
Does women’s time in domestic work and agriculture affect women’s and children’s dietary diversity? Evidence from Bangladesh, Nepal, Cambodia, Ghana, and Mozambique. Yes, but varies with socioeconomic status.
Remap: An online remote sensing application for land cover classification and monitoring. Use your training set to detect habitat type(s) in Google Earth.
Archaeobotanical evidence reveals the origins of bread 14,400 years ago in northeastern Jordan. Before domestication.
Drought tolerance during reproductive development is important for increasing wheat yield potential under climate change in Europe. The good news is that germplasm close to the optimized ideotype for 2050 is already out there.

August 2, 2018August 2, 2018

Saving trees

I’m not sure we have ever pointed to the Global Trees Campaign’s set of surveys of ex situ collections. There are individual surveys of ebony, Betulaceae, conifers, Zelkova, Rhododendron, maple, oak and Magnoliaceae, plus “Conserving the World’s Most Threatened Trees: A global survey of ex situ collections.” This came out in 2015 and includes a bunch of crop wild relatives.

July 31, 2018July 31, 2018

Nibbles: Carrot breeding, BIEN, Protected areas databases, Brazilian genebanks, Endangered coconut genebank, DSI, ABS, Climate pix, Botanical pix double, Potatoes galore, Pandanus language, Archaeological double, Palestinian seed saving

Putting the polyacetylene back into carrots.
The Botanical Information and Ecology Network gets an upgrade. Any CWRs among its 18,844,855 more observations?
And any is protected areas? This will tell how well they’re managed. Mash up with this spatial database on indigenous lands?
Otherwise, there are genebanks, though not enough in Brazil, apparently.
And not always safe.
What to do with Digital Sequence Information? Would be nice to be clear on what it is.
ABS broken down by ISF. And the CGIAR. Not DSI though.
Need climate visuals? Well, who doesn’t.
The Columbian Exchange has visuals also.
And the Royal Horticultural Society too.
Speaking of Columbian Exchange: frites. And Vavilov, chefs, etc.
Speaking about nuts in PNG. Comment by Jim Croft, who would know: “Except the species illustrated is the widespread oceanic strand species, Pandanus tectorius, not the endemic highland crop ‘karuka’, Pandanus julianettii.”
5000-year-old brewery in Egypt.
14,000-year-old bread.
Fast forward 14,000 years.