- I’ve been told I need to be more explicit in my Nibbling. So here’s a CCTV video on the Future Seeds genebank in Colombia. You know the one.
- The Australian Grains Genebank (AGG) in Horsham is announcing a new online seed catalogue. The genebank is also on Genesys.
- According to this article, the Israel Plant Gene Bank of the Volcani Center Agricultural Research Organization near Tel Aviv has some pretty cool wheats. I wonder if any of them are also in the AGG. The Volcani genebank is not on Genesys, alas. But some of its material is.
- The Director of Science of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and others say that we need lots more genebanks if we are to do all the ecosystem restoration that needs to be done around the world.
- Short & sweet blog post on the importance of food diversity from the policy officer at the Soil Association. Genebanks not mentioned though, alas.
- Vox has an article on a new European law aimed at preventing the sale of some agricultural commodities grown on recently cleared forest land. I guess the next step would be restoring those ecosystems. If only there were more genebanks…
- Some hero mapped the distribution of all the berries of North America, and made cool videos of the results.
- Report from Wageningen AU on “The need to enhance crop, livestock andaquatic genetic diversity in food systems.” Lots and lots on genebanks.
- So, what did you think? Do you prefer telegraphic, impressionistic Nibbles, or these lengthier, more explicit versions? Let me know in the comments.
Nibbles: Fancy fungus, Fancy CWR book, Fancy dataset, Fancy food, Fancy wheat collection, Fancy diet, Fancy seeds, Fancy agriculture
- Symbiotic fungus can help plants and detoxify methylmercury.
- Very attractive book on the wild tomatoes of Peru. I wonder if any of them eat heavy metals.
- There’s a new dataset on the world’s terrestrial ecosystems. I’d like to know which one has the most crop wild relative species per unit area. Has anyone done that calculation? They must have.
- Iran sets up a saffron genebank. Could have sworn they already had one.
- The Natural History Museum digs up some old wheat samples, the BBC goes a bit crazy with it.
- Paleolithic diets included plants. Maybe not wheat or saffron though.
- Community seedbanks are all the rage in Odisha.
- Seeds bring UK and South Africa closer together. Seeds in seedbanks. Not community seedbanks, perhaps, but one can hope.
- Can any of the above make agriculture any more nutrition-sensitive? I’d like to think yes. Maybe except for the mercury-eating fungus, though you never know…
Brainfood: Silkworm, Donkey, Cat, Chicken, Neolithic, Shamans, Locusts
- High-resolution silkworm pan-genome provides genetic insights into artificial selection and ecological adaptation. The silkworm was domesticated 5000 years ago in the middle Yellow River (along with millets?), but was improved independently and in different directions in China and Japan.
- The genomic history and global expansion of domestic donkeys. The donkey was domesticated in the Horn of Africa 7000 years ago and then developed in different directions in Africa and Eurasia. Covered in the NY Times, no less.
- Your horse is a donkey! Identifying domesticated equids from Western Iberia using collagen fingerprinting. Turns out you can tell horses and donkeys apart easily and cheaply from ancient collagen in archaeological remains.
- Genetics of randomly bred cats support the cradle of cat domestication being in the Near East. Humans were domesticated by cats in the eastern Mediterranean basin about 12,000 years ago.
- The history of the domestic cat in Central Europe. Wait, the Near Eastern wildcat, from which all domestic cats are derived, could have been in central Europe before the Neolithic.
- Missing puzzle piece for the origins of domestic chickens. Recent dating of chicken domestication from archaeological remains in Thailand at 1650–1250 BC underestimates the timescale. By a lot.
- Was the Fishing Village of Lepenski Vir Built by Europe’s First Farmers? And did they have cats?
- Shamanism at the transition from foraging to farming in Southwest Asia: sacra, ritual, and performance at Neolithic WF16 (southern Jordan). You need shamans to help you cope with all that animal domestication.
- Contributions of black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia L.) to livelihoods of peri-urban dwellers in the Free State Province of South Africa. Wait, black locusts are not animals? Hmm, they do seem to have some things in common with cats though.
Interested in genetic diversity in the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework?
Well, who isn’t right? Anyway, point is, the Coalition for Conservation Genetics has you covered with a dedicated website of resources in support of the CBD’s COP15. Extremely useful.
Brainfood: Genetic erosion, Ecosystem services, Cereal mixtures, Natural enemies, Soil microbiome double
- Genetic diversity loss in the Anthropocene. Don’t get excited, I don’t think the method translates to cultivated species, but fancy maths says we’ve lost on average 10% of the genetic diversity within species.
- A graphical causal model for resolving species identity effects and biodiversity–ecosystem function correlations. Yeah, but don’t forget that species level diversity is important too. Or rather, diversity of functional traits among species.
- Cereal species mixtures: an ancient practice with potential for climate resilience. A review. Species level diversity in the same farmer’s field is being forgotten, and that’s bad.
- Microbiomes in agroecosystem: Diversity, function and assembly mechanisms. Even soil microbial diversity is important…
- Association analyses of host genetics, root-colonizing microbes, and plant phenotypes under different nitrogen conditions in maize. …but the effects of soil microbial diversity can get quite complicated, and interact with the genetic diversity of crop plants. Which we may or may not have lost an average 10% of.
- Direct and indirect effects of management and landscape on biological pest control and crop pest infestation in apple orchards. Yeah, but species diversity can be bad too.