Wild relatives

June 11, 2013July 1, 2013

Eucarpia fishing in Malmo

The meeting of Eucarpia’s Genetic Resources Section is taking place in Malmo, Sweden this week, under the catchy title of “Pre-breeding — fishing in the gene pool.” Lots of old friends there. Maybe someone will tweet: there is a hashtag, but not much action yet.

LATER: No tweets yet, but here’s one presentation at least.

June 11, 2013June 11, 2013

Nibbles: Private sector support, Ecosystems, CWR, Prioritization, Training

Companies should pay to protect ecosystems.
Like these? Hope they include some agricultural ones. Maybe even urban ones.
Why you’d want to is not least because of these plants. Which can be better for micronutrients. Not to mention mainly outcrossing.
Yeah, not all species are equal. Right?
I wonder if any of this philanthropic training money will go to work on rice wild relatives.

June 10, 2013June 26, 2013

Brainfood: Maize domestication, Restoration success, Rare species, Pollinator loss, Diversity and productivity, Cacao/coffee & ecosystem services, Brazilian coffee, GM cotton benefits

Genetics and Consequences of Crop Domestication. The domestication bottleneck has consequences.
Evaluating Ecological Restoration Success: A Review of the Literature. There’s more of it going on. Evaluation, that is. Which is good. But still mainly from the USA and Australia, and not enough of the socioeconomic kind.
Rare Species Support Vulnerable Functions in High-Diversity Ecosystems. Ecosystems are distinctive because of their rare species.
Environmental factors driving the effectiveness of European agri-environmental measures in mitigating pollinator loss — a meta-analysis. We know how to lessen, but not how to mitigate, loss of pollinators.
Experimental evidence that evolutionarily diverse assemblages result in higher productivity. And the more distantly related the species, the higher the productivity gain.
A global meta-analysis of the biodiversity and ecosystem service benefits of coffee and cacao agroforestry. Agroforests better than plantations, but forests best of all.
Coefficient of Parentage in Coffea arabica L. Cultivars Grown in Brazil. Be afraid.
Genetically Modified Crops and Food Security. Turns out GM cotton has increased the income and thus improved the diets of adopting Indian farmers. Well, maybe.

June 5, 2013

Mapping more life

Just a quick note to say that the Map of Life, which we blogged about a year back, now covers plants too. Still a bit weak in the sharing department, after a quick glance, but I’ll reserve final judgement until I’ve had more of a chance to play with it.

June 3, 2013May 25, 2013

Brainfood: Grass evolution, Great Lakes fisheries, African cassava, Sustainable UK farms, USA biodiversity loss, PVS, Agriculture to the rescue

Evidence for recent evolution of cold tolerance in grasses suggests current distribution is not limited by (low) temperature. Geography a better predictor of cold tolerance than phylogeny.
May we eat biodiversity? How to solve the impasse of conservation and exploitation of biodiversity and fishery resources. We may, if we all agree.
Genetic diversity of cassava (Manihot esculenta Crantz) landraces and cultivars from southern, eastern and central Africa. There isn’t any.
Evidence of sustainable intensification among British farms. Amazingly, there is some, and aiming to increase profitability can get you there.
Key areas for conserving United States’ biodiversity likely threatened by future land use change. To the tune of 5-8% area loss, and not counting climate change. Would be interesting to know what that will do to crop wild relatives.
Dilemma in participatory selection of varieties. If it’s a one-time deal, as it often is, it ain’t gonna work.
Green Revolution research saved an estimated 18 to 27 million hectares from being brought into agricultural production. And saved 2 million ha of forest. But less than Borlaug thought. More on “Agricultural innovation to save the environment” from PNAS.