- 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.
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?
Brainfood: Wild chickpea, Feral brassica, Peruvian cacao, Panamanian cacao, Tree diversity, Healthy diets in PNG
- Genome-wide molecular diversity analyses identify wild Cicer as reservoirs of variations for chickpea improvement. Wild relatives of chickpea harbour a wealth of genetic variation that has yet to be exploited by breeders. But it’s mainly within species.
- Genetic and Morphological Diversity in Spontaneous Populations of Brassica rapa: How Do Feral Populations Differ From Wild Ones? When a crop escapes cultivation, does it become wild again? Apparently not. Pity.
- Genetic structure of traditional cacao reveals four new genetic lineages in indigenous Amazonian sites in Peru. Genetic analysis of traditional cacao maintained by Indigenous communities in the Peruvian Amazon uncovers four previously undescribed genetic lineages.
- Contrasting germplasm composition and propagation practices in the two major cacao-growing areas in Panama. Two of Panama’s principal cacao-growing regions have developed markedly different genetic profiles, reflecting both the varieties farmers cultivate and how they propagate them. I think they have been previously described though.
- Ecological multifunctionality of watersheds increases with tree species richness. Watersheds planted with a greater diversity of tree species perform better across multiple ecological functions simultaneously, including nutrient cycling, soil protection and water regulation.
- Nutrition sensitive poverty and its correlates in Papua New Guinea: incorporating healthy diet targets into poverty measurement. Conventional poverty measures ask whether people can afford basic necessities. Why not ask a more demanding question: can they afford a healthy diet? Hopefully meaning a diverse one.
Playing around with wild potatoes
Journey through 1946’s South America to find and collect wild potato plants, which might hold the key to defeat the blight affecting British crops.
Choose your route, solve puzzles, and learn more about the world of potato biodiversity. But be careful not to run out of resources or you’ll have to cut your expedition short!
That’s all the introduction you get to a new online game from Abertay University and the James Hutton Institute, but it’s clearly inspired by Jack Hawkes’ famous potato collecting expeditions to South America. The resulting Empire Potato Collection, now called the Commonwealth Potato Collection, is still maintained at the Hutton. Our friend Mike Jackson has blogged very comprehensively about it, and also about his own efforts following in the footsteps of Prof. Hawkes.
Let’s see what Mike thinks about the game. I found it a little tricky to get into, though mildly entertaining once I did. But I never collected wild potatoes.
Brainfood: Animal genetic resources
- Beyond the binary: Queer inclusion and invisible labour in Samoa’s fisheries value chains. Fisheries in Samoa depend on significant but largely unrecognized labour by LGBTQ+ people, particularly fa’afafine and fa’afatama, whose contributions are overlooked by policies based on rigid gender categories.
- Genetic and morphological diversity of indigenous chicken of Kenya: A Review. Kenya’s indigenous chickens are adapted to diverse environments, resilient to disease, and important for rural livelihoods.
- Uncovering the lives of rock doves (Columba livia) in Late Bronze Age Hala Sultan Tekke, Cyprus. Rock doves lived alongside people in a major Late Bronze Age port city, revealing a more complex relationship than simple domestication in which doves exploited urban environments while providing food and other resources.
- Farmed Escapees Threaten MHC Diversity in Wild Atlantic Salmon. Escaped farmed Atlantic salmon can erode the diversity of major histocompatibility complex (MHC) genes in wild populations through interbreeding, which could reduce the long-term resilience and adaptability of wild salmon.
- Creation of intermuscular bone-free genetic mutants in grass carp and multiomics reveals molecular regulatory basis. Genome editing was used to produce grass carp lacking the numerous fine intermuscular bones that reduce consumer appeal, opening new possibilities for breeding more marketable fish while deepening understanding of skeletal biology.