- Do community seed banks contribute to the social-ecological resilience of communities? A case-study from Western Guatemala. Yes, but they have to move with the times.
- Reconciling global priorities for conserving biodiversity habitat. Only about 20% of high value habitat is protected.
- Genome-wide selection and genetic improvement during modern maize breeding. Breeding in the US and China converged.
- Non-wood forest products in Europe – A quantitative overview. Value of berries, mushrooms etc. amounts to almost three quarters of the value of the wood harvest, ten times the usually estimate.
- Latitudinal gradient in dairy production with the introduction of farming in Atlantic Europe. Was there a taboo against fish?
- Recent Advances in Dual Purpose Rice and Wheat Research: a synthesis. It was worth focusing on straw in breeding, and still is.
- Mapping local patterns of childhood overweight and wasting in low- and middle-income countries between 2000 and 2017. Hotspots in Indonesia, Thailand, southeastern China, Botswana, Cameroon and central Nigeria. Surely dietary diversity could help in those places?
- Is there a peaceful cohabitation between human and natural habitats? Assessing global patterns of species loss. Yes, there is, in very poor and very rich places. Would be interesting to mash up with the above.
- Back to the Wild: On a Quest for Donors Toward Salinity Tolerant Rice. Need to move beyond rufipogon.
- Insights into phylogeny, age and evolution of Allium (Amaryllidaceae) based on the whole plastome sequences. Monophyletic, amazingly, with 3 evolutionary lineages.
- Barley Landraces: Ecological heritage for edaphic stress adaptations and sustainable production. Use landraces as recipients, rather than donors. Before it’s too late.
- Ten simple rules for innovative dissemination of research. More in the breach, I suspect…
Plant, People, Planet, Data
We are creating a special collection of Plants, People, Planet to provide a space for this range of opinions as well as examples and background information on these complex and challenging topics.
Oh yeah, and what might those be, Colin? Nothing less than access to digital information on crop diversity. That usually means genotypic information, but not only. You’ll remember that issue was very much front and centre at the most recent meeting of the Governing Body of the Plant Treaty a few months back, in another life. Got a case study, or indeed a solution? You can submit them here.
Genebanks in the time of COVID-19
From the desk of Landscape News comes a series of live interviews with experts examining the linkages between COVID-19 and climate change. On 13 May, Tony Simons, director general of World Agroforestry (ICRAF), will speak with Charlotte Lusty, head of programs and genebank platform coordinator at Crop Trust; Lava Kumar, virologist and head of germplasm health at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA); and Vania Azevedo, genebank head at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) about the relationship between COVID-19, genebanks and the conservation of seeds.
Register here.
Our climate envelope takes a licking
The headlines for coverage of the paper “Future of the human climate niche” will no doubt be about the fact that over the coming 50 years, absent migration or mitigation, 1 to 3 billion people look like they’ll end up living outside the climatic conditions our species has gotten used to over the past 6000 years. But I can’t help thinking about something else. What are those bits of the human climate envelope where there is currently so little agriculture and livestock? I’ve drawn little white ovals around them in this figure from the paper.
Food Planet Prize highlights agrobiodiversity
I didn’t know about the Food Planet Prize, but the editors’ picks this year in the area of biodiversity look pretty cool.
The selection comes with a Special Report by Dan Saladino on “Biodiversity in farming and nature.” You can submit nominations until 31 May.