Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

December 3, 2019December 4, 2019

Old vines in a new catalogue

Who doesn’t love old trees? I, for one, could read about them for days. And, alas, have occasionally done so. Especially if they are cultivated species. The internet is full of old, attractively gnarled olive trees, for example. Old grapevines, not so much. There was recently that piece in The Economist about recreating Leonardo’s vineyard, but that’s not quite the same thing.

So it was a pleasant surprise to come across the Old Vines Register, curated by wine expert Jancis Robinson. Turns out there are some 400-year-old vines out there. Which I’d really like to see some day.

Anyway, since I’m talking grapes, I might as well highlight the work of the Vitis Working Group of the European Cooperative Programme for Plant Genetic Resources (ECPGR). Note in particular their “On-farm inventory of minor grape varieties in the European Vitis Database.” There must be some pretty old vines among those.

As for genebanks, there are 16,000 accessions of cultivated Vitis out there (plus 2,400 wild relatives), according to Genesys, though only about 1,900 are geo-referenced (see map below). Genesys, remember, brings data from ECPGR’s European genebank database, Eurisco, together with that from genebanks in other parts of the world. There is also a separate European Vitis Database, though I’m not sure of the exact overlap with Eurisco.

What of the future? Well, we’re probably going to need all that diversity given what climate change is already doing to the crop. A recent Twitter thread by Dr Sarah Taber analyzed the depiction of vineyards in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation set in the year 2367. We’ll just have to see if her decidedly critical view of twenty-fourth century management practices is borne out in the forthcoming series, which does seem to feature, at least according to the trailer, somewhat better kept, though not particularly old-looking, vines. No word yet on what varieties the Picards grew, and will grow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ishyf14_yx0

December 2, 2019December 2, 2019

Brainfood: Cassava diversity, Landrace diversity double, Soybean oil quality, Cucurbit domestication, Carrot colours, Pharaonic emmer, Teosinte RILs, Chinese pigs, Brazilian apples, Teosinte diversity, Forests & diets, Forest productivity, Agricultural productivity

A global overview of cassava genetic diversity. The African germplasm is different from the Latin American, but not by that much.
Genetic variability in landraces populations and the risk to lose genetic variation. The example of landrace ‘Kyperounda’ and its implications for ex situ conservation. Better genetically to conserve landraces as sub-lines. But financially?
Impact of merging commercial breeding lines on the genetic diversity of Landrace pigs. Above goes for pigs too.
Selection and Molecular Characterization of Soybeans with High Oleic Acid from Plant Germplasm of Genebank. 3 accessions have interesting variants in the relevant gene.
Origin and domestication of Cucurbitaceae crops: insights from phylogenies, genomics and archaeology. Lots of different paths to domestication, but all involve loss of flesh bitterness, one way or another.
Changing Carrot Color: Insertions in DcMYB7 Alter the Regulation of Anthocyanin Biosynthesis and Modification. How the carrot lost its purple.
A 3,000-year-old Egyptian emmer wheat genome reveals dispersal and domestication history. Most closely resembles modern material from Turkey, Oman and India.
TeoNAM: A Nested Association Mapping Population for Domestication and Agronomic Trait Analysis in Maize. With added teosinte goodness.
Adaptive phenotypic divergence in an annual grass differs across biotic contexts. The rhizosphere affects adaptation of teosinte along an altitudinal gradient. We’ll need a Nested Association Mapping Population for that too now, no doubt.
Population genetics assessment model reveals priority protection of genetic resources in native pig breeds in China. Most breeds have low diversity; Tibetan pigs are an exception.
A brief history of the forty-five years of the E’AppleBP apple breeding program in Brazil. 27 new varieties seems like pretty good going.
Testing the Various Pathways Linking Forest Cover to Dietary Diversity in Tropical Landscapes. Sometimes there’s a direct pathway (e.g., consumption of forest food), sometimes an income pathway (income from forest products used to purchase food from markets), and sometimes an agroecological pathway (forests and trees sustaining farm production). And sometimes there isn’t.
Evolutionary diversity is associated with wood productivity in Amazonian forests. “…greater phylogenetic diversity translates into higher levels of ecosystem function.” No word on its effect on diets.
Anatomy and resilience of the global production ecosystem. Plenty of words on its effect on diets.

November 28, 2019November 28, 2019

Mainstreaming agrobiodiversity for nutrition

A new discussion paper from GAIN, the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition, looks at some indicative Policies and financing to spur appropriate private-sector engagement in food systems. “Appropriate” meaning conducive to the production and consumption of more agrobiodiverse diets. It’s not long, so you should probably read the whole thing. But here are the take-home messages, to whet your appetite, as it were:

reduce taxes and increase subsidies on nutritious crops and foods (eg fruits and vegetables)
amend policies which encourage biofortification and industrial fortification to also include encouraging the increased production and consumption of existing nutritious species and varieties
make the case for diverse farming systems to impact investors and blended finance practitioners
nudge business sustainability strategies to include biodiversity and ecosystem considerations (eg, via the Agrobiodiversity Index)

Not a comprehensive list, of course, but a pretty good start.

November 28, 2019November 28, 2019

A president checks his herd

It’s not every day you see a long Twitter thread on agricultural biodiversity from an actual president.

Recently, I was in Kisozi and Rwakitura, checking on my cattle. I thought it wise to share a few facts about some of the cows. pic.twitter.com/uKK50vQIwR

— Yoweri K Museveni (@KagutaMuseveni) November 27, 2019

Do bananas next, Mr President?

November 26, 2019February 26, 2020

PGR training needs identified

There’s an open access Crop Science Special Issue out under the title: Connecting Agriculture, Public Gardens and Science. Well worth having a look at. There’s great stuff on crop wild relatives, plant awareness, chefs, and trans-situ conservation, just to give you a flavour. There’s also a summary of the symposium that gave rise to the special issue. Our friend Colin Khoury was closely involved.

I’ll just highlight here the paper by Gayle Volk and others on training needs in plant genetic resources conservation. ((Volk, G. M., P. K. Bretting, and P. F. Byrne. 2019. Survey Identifies Essential Plant Genetic Resources Training Program Components. Crop Sci. 59:2308-2316. doi:10.2135/cropsci2019.05.0324.)) The authors sent out a survey and analyzed the feedback from 425 respondents by type of institution: academia, NPGS, CGIAR, national genebanks, NGOs and the private sector. There were, fortunately, some topics which a majority across all institutions considered high priority areas for training:

accessing information
crop wild relatives
genotyping
phenotyping
intellectual property and regulatory issues

But there were also some differences.

The respondents from academia were also interested … in prebreeding, which is not surprising because many of these respondents were plant breeders. Respondents from the private sector were also interested … in requests/distributions and prebreeding, and respondents from NGOs were also interested … in collection gap analyses, explorations, germplasm preservation, intellectual property, and regulations. The genebank respondents (NPGS, CGIAR, non-NPGS government) considered germplasm preservation, intellectual property, and general concepts in plant genetic diversity as priority topics. These differences among the institutional types are not surprising due to their different missions.

This all came out of an initiative from the NPGS that started back in early 2018. Training materials of various types are being developed. Will keep you posted.