- Draft technical guidelines from FAO on conserving crop wild relatives at national level.
- Small farms are beautiful.
- Finding the climate adaptation needle in the genomic haystack. Hint: supercomputers needed. DivSeek alerted?
- Emma Cooper asks: “…have you got a favourite ‘forgotten’ edible plant that you’d like to champion?”
- James Wong talks about that kind of thing too, and much else garden-related besides, on his new website.
- Rejoice, Google Earth Pro is now free!
- Wageningen UR course on Food For All.
- UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism is offering ten $10,000 postgraduate Food and Farming Journalism Fellowships. ‘Nuff said.
- Speaking of fellowships: the 2015 call for Bioversity’s Vavilov-Frankel Fellowship is open.
- Possible new Cannabis species from Australia: watch them do the DNA work and spoil it. Gap analysis, anyone? … As you were, didn’t need DNA after all.
Wild potato diversity halved
David Spooner and co-workers have written a comprehensive overview of the systematics and genetics of wild and cultivated potato species (Solanum section Petota) 1. This nicely illustrated and very accessible paper is essential reading for anyone interested in potato diversity — or indeed the study of plant diversity in general.
A remarkable aspect of wild potato systematics is the way the number of recognized species has fluctuated over time. In 1956, Hawkes recognized 106 species, but in his 1990 treatment of the group this had increased to 232. This will likely be the highest number we’ll see, because it has come down drastically since, and Spooner et al.’s paper puts it at 107 — almost exactly where it was back in 1956. This does not mean that we are back to the same set of taxa though. Many new species were described after 1956, notably by Carlos Ochoa, who named about 25% of the 107 species. 2
The graph below shows the number of species over time, based on published compilations, and the name of the authors 3 .
It is not easy to determine where a wild potato species begins and where it ends. Many species look very similar, and there is “lack of strong biological isolating mechanisms and the resulting interspecific hybridization and introgression, allopolyploidy, a mixture of sexual and asexual reproduction, and recent species divergence.” A smaller number of species is not necessarily better, but, in the case of wild potatoes, Spooner et al. think it will help us move away from “a taxonomy that is unnatural, unworkable, and perpetuates variant identification” to a system that hopefully enables better conservation and use of these plants.
It also creates a mess, though, because previous analyses based on species level diversity, for example to set collection and conservation priorities, may need to be revised. Spooner et al. update some of the analysis of geographic pattern in wild potato species richness described previously.
The reduction in the number of species is in large part due to new insights from David Spooner’s incessant work on this group, through molecular and morphological studies, and observations during collecting expeditions. His kind of naturalist is a species that is also declining in numbers, or so it seems. That is not a good thing, as there is a lot of work to do.
Brainfood: Organic convergence, Wine yeast diversity, Cassava genome, Potato wild relatives, PREDICTS predicts, Seed cryo, Community seedbanks, Maize OPV evolution, Conservation conflict, Biofortification
- Organic and Non-Organic Farming: Is Convergence Possible? Yes, but conversion is more likely.
- The vintage effect overcomes the terroir effect: a three years survey on the wine yeast biodiversity in Franciacorta and Oltrepò Pavese, two Northern Italian vine-growing areas. Year more important than place as determinant of yeast diversity.
- Cassava genome from a wild ancestor to cultivated varieties. The genes that have been selected are the ones you’d think. And here’s the thing actually being used.
- Taxonomy and Genetic Differentiation among Wild and Cultivated Germplasm of Solanum sect. Petota. The genes that have been selected are the ones you’d think. Oh, and the taxonomy is fine.
- The PREDICTS database: a global database of how local terrestrial biodiversity responds to human impacts. Could prove useful. But it doesn’t look like the data is available yet.
- C-2001: Survival of short-lived desiccation tolerant seeds during long-term storage in liquid nitrogen: Implications for the management and conservation of plant germplasm collections. It’s not always great.
- Ensuring food security in the small islands of Maluku: A community genebank approach. Won’t be easy.
- Evaluation of Evolution and Diversity of Maize Open-Pollinated Varieties Cultivated under Contrasted Environmental and Farmers’ Selection Pressures: A Phenotypical Approach. Maize OPVs changed a bit in farmers’ fields over 3 years, but not in how they looked.
- Conservation planning in agricultural landscapes: hotspots of conflict between agriculture and nature. Threatened mammals and cropland areas where yield gap is highest are, not surprisingly, mostly found together in sub-Saharan Africa. I wonder if the same could be said for threatened crop wild relatives?
- Biofortification for Selecting and Developing Crop Cultivars Denser in Iron and Zinc. Current strategy is QTL detection followed by MAS, but much more downstream work on processing, extension and acceptance needed.
Nibbles: Potatoes, Saffron, Mammoths, Yield variation, African CWR, Indian cattle
- China needs potatoes. And McDonalds.
- And Afghanistan needs saffron.
- Mammoths killed by people, not asteroids.
- A third of yield variability due to climate.
- Conserving crop wild relatives in southern Africa.
- “The fascination for exotic cattle breeds has been the bane of Indian dairy industry.”
Sweet potato expert passes away
Very sad to hear of the passing a few days ago of Dr Daniel F. Austin. Among other things, he was one of the world’s top experts on the biodiversity of the sweet potato and its wild relatives.