Wild relatives

September 18, 2013September 18, 2013

Botanic gardens conserve crop diversity too, two.

Speaking of social media, Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh just published an interesting post entitled Botanic gardens conserve crop diversity too. ¹ The crux of the matter is that RBGE tweeted about having collected some wild relatives of cabbages and other veg. A picture of one cabbage caught Luigi’s eye, as pictures of wild relatives often will, and he in turn discovered that the population from which it came is not represented in the UK’s leading collection at the Genetic Resources Unit in Warwick. Horrors! As he said at the time:

[T]he material mentioned in the Edinburgh tweet, which comes from Fife in Scotland, is likely to add significant diversity to the “national” collection at Warwick. Scope for some closer collaboration between these two institutes? Well, maybe it’s already there and I haven’t caught it. Do let me know if I’m being unfair.

@RBGE_Science shot back a tweet.

Fast forward less than a week, and RBGE now has this to say:

Seed samples from wild collections … will be passed to the Genetic Resources Unit at Warwick to enhance their CWR collection. An example of the value of this collaboration is provided by the fact that Warwick currently has no Scottish origin wild cabbage. … [T]his in turn will provide further ex-situ conservation for what is quite a rare plant in Scotland.

Was Luigi being unfair? Or should he take full credit for furthering cross-border collaboration in the important matter of cabbage wild relatives?

September 17, 2013

Nibbles: Chickens, Markets x 2, Bananas, Cover crops, Pyramid foods, Beans, Maize, Austrian diversity, Tuberous legume, Natural wine, Figs and mulberries, Meetings x 3, Purple sweet potatoes, Bambusetum

Backyard chickens too much hassle? We have the solution for you.
Supplies go up, prices go down. Those pesky speculators had nothing to do with it.
Prices go up … The story for India’s agrciultural labourers.
Colombia’s loss will Ecuador’s gain. Predictions for bananas in the 2060s.
Conventional farmer loves cover crops. Shurely shome mishtake.
Building the pyramids. It’s a tough job, but at least you eat well.
Beans with benefits. On the road with a breeder in Rwanda.
Chinese maize diversity explored, a bit.
Massive diversity of all sorts of thing, in German.
Rhizowen has another favourite underutilised legume crop: Amphicarpaea bracteata subsp edgeworthii.
It’s vino, but is it natural?
How is a fig like a mulberry? The Botanist in the Kitchen explains.
Capturing wild relative and landrace diversity for crop improvement. A conference, in June 2014.
Agricultural Biodiversity Community @ Work. A conference, in June 2013. PENHA was there.
Preparations are underway for Kew’s Great Seed Swap. Call me dumb, but I cannot see a date anywhere there.
Purple sweet potatoes to dye for.
Oh boy! A regional genebank for bamboo. A bambusetum, no less.

September 16, 2013September 9, 2016

Brainfood: Identifying GMOs, European beans, Palm distribution, Croatian cattle, Beta biodiversity, Apple pollination, Chinese foxtail millet, New Brassica, Pennisetum & latitude, Egusi oil

Next-Generation Sequencing as a Tool for Detailed Molecular Characterisation of Genomic Insertions and Flanking Regions in Genetically Modified Plants: a Pilot Study Using a Rice Event Unauthorised in the EU. A rice event? They mean GMOs.
Genetic Diversity and Dissemination Pathways of Common Bean in Central Europe. Slovenia is mainly Andean, Austria a mixture of Andean and Mesoamerican.
Spatial distribution and environmental preferences of 10 economically important forest palms in western South America. It’s the water, stupid.
Genetic variability of microsatellites in autochthonous Podolian cattle breeds in Croatia. Istrian cattle and Slavonian Syrmian Podolians are similar, but not identical. I dunno, I just hope someone is keeping track of all this stuff.
Biodiversity Assessment of Sugar Beet Species and Its Wild Relatives: Linking Ecological Data with New Genetic Approaches. Where to find them, and how to use them. EcoTILLING is the way to go, apparently.
Biodiversity ensures plant–pollinator phenological synchrony against climate change. The more pollinators, the better.
Molecular diversity and population structure of Chinese green foxtail [Setaria viridis (L.) Beauv.] revealed by microsatellite analysis. Domesticated has geographical structure, wild does not. Origin in N China.
A new species of Brassica sect. Brassica (Brassicaceae) from Sicily. It never ends.
Latitudinal patterns of diversity in the world collection of pearl millet landraces at the ICRISAT genebank. Aim for 15°–20°.
Genetic Mapping of Seed Traits Correlated with Seed Oil Percentage in Watermelon. Egusi, to be precise. Aim for bigger seeds.

September 14, 2013September 14, 2013

Nibbles: Lathyrism, Ancient maize, Sustainable cacao, Bioversity on agrobiodiversity, Weird fruits, Carrot seed, Palm wine, Buckwheat, Halophytes issue, Weird(ish) crops, Urban malnutrition, Old oranges, Molasses, Indian tree institute

An ODAP detective story.
Ancient maize gets a map.
Diversity is the key to sustainable cacao.
New Bioversity DG answers the tough questions.
Be the first on your block with an unusual fruit tree.
How to grow awesome carrot seed.
The hard life of Nigerian wine tappers.
Bringing back buckwheat in Bhutan.
Annals of Botany to do halophytes.
Come down to earth with the realization that most people have never heard of cowpea and cassava. Would they have heard of black-eyed peas and tapioca, though?
Big report on urban malnutrition. Maybe cassava (see above) can help?
The last orange grove in the San Fernando Valley. No word on what the variety might be.
All about molasses.
Indian tree breeding institute, and accompanying genebank, get a write-up.
Yes, I know that I could have done a better job of pointing out the connections among some of these things, but it’s been a long week.

September 13, 2013

Si huele a caña, tabaco y brea…

Our friend and colleague Colin Khoury knows a lot about crop wild relatives…

…but he’s a man of many parts, another one of which involves salsa dancing. I can’t locate a video of him strutting his stuff on a Cali dancefloor, but here’s the next best thing, his thoughts on the nexus of salsa and agrobiodiversity, courtesy one of CIAT’s myriad blogs.