Wild relatives

August 7, 2020August 6, 2020

Meta-Brainfood for the weekend

Time to clean up a few things, I think. For a while now, I’ve been hoarding links to edited volumes. My idea was to do a special dedicated Brainfood on each one, but I now fear that just ain’t gonna happen. Too much other stuff on. So here they are. Maybe one of you will help me out? You know what to do. A pithy one or two sentences summarizing each paper, based on the abstract only if you’re into the whole brevity thing. Interested? Let me know in the comments below, and we’ll set something up. Our first guest-curated Brainfood…

Here they are:

Do you remember the 2017 book Against The Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States by James C. Scott? I think we may have blogged about it. Anyway, it suggested that it was grain (as opposed to tuber) cultivation that led to the development of hierarchical states. Grain is visible and portable, and so easy to tax, you see. There are interviews with the author galore if you like podcasts. Ok, well, the Cambridge Archaeological Journal had a whole Review Symposium deconstructing that particular revisionist narrative.
In 2018, something called the 1st International Conference on Genetic Resources and Biotechnology was held in Bogor, Indonesia. A bit of a misnomer, it was really mainly about “[i]nformation system and exchanges of genetic resources for effective crop improvement.” These are the proceedings, and all of the dozens of papers are open access. Maybe someone out there could do their Top 10.
This one is not as relevant as the others, but it’s interesting nonetheless: Remote Sensing of Plant Biodiversity. Surely some of the 20 contributions have something to say about agricultural biodiversity? Who’s willing to have a look?
Then there’s the Special Issue of Application in Plant Sciences on Machine Learning in Plant Biology: Advances Using Herbarium Specimen Images. Yummy. Automated identification of CWR specimens, anyone?
And finally, just out, a Topical Collection in Agriculture and Human Values on Agriculture, Food & Covid-19. Come on, who can resist a hot-take (well, a Rapid Response Opinion) entitled Maybe there is an alternative after all?

Looking forward to hearing from you.

And don’t worry, there’ll be a normal Brainfood on Monday as usual.

August 4, 2020March 5, 2026

Nibbles: UN training, Genebanks double, CG spatial data, Fruit IPR, Citrus greening, Sikkim diversity, Bulgarian lavender, Biogenetic Paradoxes, Heroin, Palestinian eggplant

Training courses on multilateral environmental agreements, including CBD and Plant Treaty.
CGIAR dashboard on the Genebank Platform. More data here.
Some of the above are included in this list of the world’s most high profile genebanks.
The latest spatial crop data from CGIAR. Useful for genebanks, among other things.
Protecting fruit intellectual property. Wait, that didn’t come out right.
I guess this fruit is next.
Sikkim’s agricultural diversity as colours on a palette.
Lavender is a nice colour, whether in France or Bulgaria.
Book on nation-building through agricultural biodiversity. Bulgarians unavailable for comment.
Poppy diversity being helped by solar panels to build something or other in Afghanistan.
Palestinian paean to the bitinjan. Jeremy goes to town on it in his latest newsletter.

August 3, 2020August 24, 2020

Brainfood: Perennial favourites, Feral grapevines, Silky cat, Damaged yams, Maize vs sorghum, Sunflower ecotypes, Fungal diversity, Pacific voyaging, Vitamin seeds, Biogeoinformatics, Natural language, Evaluation, Aquaculture

Perennial vegetables: A neglected resource for biodiversity, carbon sequestration, and nutrition. Over 600 perennial veggies on 6% of global vegetable cropland.
Genomic Evidences Support an Independent History of Grapevine Domestication in the Levant. Separate from what happened in the Caucasus, that is.
Distribution, prevalence and severity of damages caused by nematodes on yam (Dioscorea rotundata) in Nigeria. A quarter of tubers and half of heaps showed nematode symptoms.
Maize long-term genetic progress explains current dominance over sorghum in Argentina. Follow the money.
Phenotypic and physiological responses to salt exposure in Sorghum reveal diversity among domesticated landraces. Salinity tolerance was acquired early but then lost in some geographic regions where it wasn’t needed. See what happens when you invest in a crop?
Massive haplotypes underlie ecotypic differentiation in sunflowers. It’s the recombination-suppressing inversions, stupid.
GlobalFungi, a global database of fungal occurrences from high-throughput-sequencing metabarcoding studies. Cool. Do landraces of a crop next.
The earliest domestic cat on the Silk Road. Coincided with rapid urbanization in the 9th century.
Native American gene flow into Polynesia predating Easter Island settlement. Yeah, but did Americans go west of their own accord or in Polynesian boats? And did they have sweetpotatoes with them? And cats?
Genetic markers associated with seed longevity and vitamin E in diverse Aus rice varieties. 5 markers on 4 chromosomes.
Biogeoinformatics for the management of Farm Animal Genetic Resources (FAnGR). Software for monitoring erosion and detecting locally adapted genotypes. Plus preserve traditional practices.
Computing on Phenotypic Descriptions for Candidate Gene Discovery and Crop Improvement. Casually talk about a plant in the field –> fancy math –> the plant’s genotype.
Data synthesis for crop variety evaluation. A review. Focus on ranking. Oh, to mash it up with the above.
Scenarios for Global Aquaculture and Its Role in Human Nutrition. For aquaculture to contribute to nutrition it needs enabling trade and economic policies. Well I never.

August 2, 2020November 10, 2020

More on making bread Down Under

Do you remember a Nibble from a few weeks back about the bread-making potential of Australian native grasses? If you do, you may have wondered, as we did at the time, what grasses they might be, because “mandadyan nalluk” or “dancing grass” just don’t yield very much additional information on googling.

Well, there’s now a piece in The Conservation that is basically about the same thing, but thankfully links to a scientific name. Or four scientific names, to be exact, for four species in Astrebla, which is a genus that is new to me.

I do love seeing vernacular names in multiple languages being quoted in articles, but I also think they should always be backed-up by a Latin binomial.

And vice versa, of course.

LATER: Wow, The Guardian really likes this stuff. Still no Latin names though.

July 27, 2020July 27, 2020

In situ conservation practitioners in Europe getting serious

The latest from the Farmer’s Pride project, which as you may remember focuses on the in situ conservation of landraces and crop wild relatives in Europe:

“This tool is for landrace maintainers or those considering the cultivation of landraces to diversify their crop production system. It provides access to evidence-based information on the benefits, opportunities and practices of landrace cultivation to help in decision-making and to promote their in situ maintenance as a means of conserving and diversifying plant genetic resources for food, nutrition and livelihood security.”
“Are you taking care of plant diversity in situ (in cultivation and in the wild) and interested in joining forces to support future food security?” Yes? Then please take this survey.

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