Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog
Agrobiodiversity is crops, livestock, foodways, microbes, pollinators, wild relatives …
Global spatially explicit yield gap time trends reveal regions at risk of future crop yield stagnation. For 8 of 10 major crops, yield gaps have widened steadily from 1975 to 2010 over most areas, and remained static for sugar cane and oil palm. Time to turbo-charge the breeding? Domestication and the evolution of crops: variable …
Jordan’s genebank in the news. Tuber Man of Kerala’s genebank in the news. Pricy Himalayan mushroom in the news, should probably be in a genebank. Bee breeders in the news. Probably a first.
Australian politicians promise genebank. World holds its breath. Meanwhile, in Turkey… … and India… …and Peru… …and China. Another way of getting seeds to farmers. What, even irradiated ones? But don’t forget the bees. Hopefully DIS won’t scupper all this sharing. Because although our foods are not set in stone… …we’ll need more than changes …
The genetic identity of the earliest human-made hybrid animals, the kungas of Syro-Mesopotamia. According to 4500 year old DNA, these super-donkeys were sterile crosses between female domestic donkeys and wild male asses. I guarantee nothing below will be as much fun as this. Haplotype analyses reveal novel insights into tomato history and domestication driven by …
The ancient, wild, Georgian roots of bread wheat gluten. Wild relatives could help us save coffee. But we knew that. Right? Photosynthesis in wild rices responds more quickly to light changes than in the crop, stomata not so much. Sometimes domestication giveth, sometimes it taketh away. It gave us the Three Sisters for sure. With …