Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

February 7, 2024February 7, 2024

Featured: Too obvious?

Rather than “too good to be true”, this scheme is too obvious to happen. Stakeholders, public or private, do due diligence, especially if the “flagship project”, “demonstration case” or “experiment” runs into the hundreds of millions of dollars. This is of public concern.

That’s from Prof. Joseph Henry Vogel in reply to a recent(ish) post on decoupled ABS for PGRFA. Read the whole critique here.

January 29, 2024January 24, 2024

Brainfood: Nutrition edition

Which crop biodiversity is used by the food industry throughout the world? A first evidence for legume species. Mainly soy, alas. Which is bad because…
Diversified agriculture leads to diversified diets: panel data evidence from Bangladesh. …promoting diversified farming systems and market participation is good for women’s empowerment and better diets. Which is just as well because…
Historical shifting in grain mineral density of landmark rice and wheat cultivars released over the past 50 years in India. …breeding hasn’t been good for nutritional content in staples.
Surviving mutations: how an Indonesian Capsicum frutescens L. cultivar maintains capsaicin biosynthesis despite disruptive mutations. But if you can breed for extreme pungency, you can surely breed for better nutrient content.
Exploiting Indian landraces to develop biofortified grain sorghum with high protein and minerals. Yep, simple selection can make a sorghum landrace more nutritious.
Genome-edited foods. Or you could resort to gene editing.
Adoption and impact of improved amaranth cultivars in Tanzania using DNA fingerprinting. Although maybe it might be easier to just eat more amaranth.
Stakeholders’ perceptions of and preferences for utilizing fonio (Digitaria exilis) to enrich local diets for food and nutritional security in Nigeria. But documenting knowledge will be key in either case.
Domestication through clandestine cultivation constrained genetic diversity in magic mushrooms relative to naturalized populations. And watch what you’re doing to diversity.

January 23, 2024January 23, 2024

Diversifying rotations for climate change adaptation and mitigation

Jeremy’s latest newsletter summarizes a summary of a roundup of rotation research from northern China. Bottom line: more crops better.

Anthropocene Magazine has a handy summary of recent research into crop diversity on the North China Plain. Bottom line: adding more crops to the current dominant rotation of wheat and maize increases yields and profits, sequesters more carbon in the soil and reduces overall greenhouse gas emissions.

The researchers added sweet potato and a legume, like soybeans or peanuts, to the rotation and at the same time reduced the amount of synthetic fertilisers applied to the field. Sweet potato is a cash crop that increased farmers incomes by about 60%. Soybeans and peanuts have a lower impact on incomes (13–22% increase) but more than compensated for lower fertiliser inputs. Not surprisingly, lower nitrogen fertiliser results in lower emissions of nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas. What was a surprise was an increase in carbon in the soil, perhaps because diverse crops result in more diverse microbial populations which in turn trap atmospheric methane and carbon dioxide.

[D]eveloping and adopting diversified cropping systems should be a key consideration in agricultural policy setting and a top priority for on-farm decision-making.

Projecting the experimental results to the whole of the North China Plain could, the researchers say, increase cereal production by 32% and reduce the need for fertilisers by 3.6 million tonnes. That alone, they say, would reduce China’s greenhouse gas emissions by 6%. And annual farm incomes would increase by 20%.

December 18, 2023December 15, 2023

Brainfood: MLS, PPP, GMOs, SINAREFI, FGD, InDel

What Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture Are Available under the Plant Treaty and Where Is This Information? It’s really difficult to know, and it shouldn’t be.
Bridging the gap? Public–private partnerships and genetically modified crop development for smallholder farmers in Africa. They really haven’t worked. But should they have?
Recalcitrant maize: Conserving agrobiodiversity in the era of genetically modified organisms. Trying to keep landraces and GMOs both physically and conceptually apart won’t work, and doesn’t need to.
Flavour, culture and food security: The spicy entanglements of chile pepper conservation in 21st century Mexico. Efforts to ensure food security needs to take flavour into account if they are to work.
Gender differential in choices of crop variety traits and climate-smart cropping systems: Insights from sorghum and millet farmers in drought-prone areas of Malawi. Efforts to improve crop adaptation and resilience to climate change need to take gender into account if they are to work.
A target cultivar-specific identification system based on the chromatographic printed array strip method for eight prominent Japanese citrus cultivars. Specific DNA markers can be used to enforce plant breeders’ rights.

December 11, 2023

Brainfood: Lima bean network, Obake rice, Feral Canadian apples, African plum seed systems, Canary Island potatoes, Wild potatoes & late blight, Wild lentils & drought, Wild grapes & salt, Robusta core, Ethiopian barley diversity, De novo wheat domestication

International Lima Bean Network: from the origin of the species to modern plant breeding. And you can join it here.
Solving the mystery of Obake rice in Africa: population structure analyses of Oryza longistaminata reveal three genetic groups and evidence of both recent and ancient introgression with O. sativa. The wild African O. longistaminata is closer to Asian O. sativa than to other African wild species, and shows evidence of ancient introgression from O. sativa in southern Africa. Definitely worth a network.
The origins and evolutionary history of feral apples in southern Canada. They are mainly recombinants involving early heritage cultivars, with no hybridization with local wild species. So, not like rice in Africa.
Can seed exchange networks explain the morphological and genetic diversity in perennial crop species? The case of the tropical fruit tree Dacryodes edulis in rural and urban Cameroon. Cities are hotspots of African plum diversity because people bring in tress from all over the place. So, a bit like apples in Canada.
Ancient Potato Varieties of the Canary Islands: Their History, Diversity and Origin of the Potato in Europe. “The Andes end in the Canary Islands.” A bit like how the Caucasus ends in Canada?
Functional diversification of a wild potato immune receptor at its center of origin. Wild species can be used to improve the late blight tolerance of cultivated potatoes.
Limited-transpiration trait in response to high vapor pressure deficit from wild to cultivated species: study of the Lens genus. Wild species can be used to improve the drought tolerance of cultivated lentils.
A Tunisian wild grape leads to metabolic fingerprints of salt tolerance. Wild species can be used to improve the salt tolerance of cultivated grapes.
Characterization of the genetic composition and establishment of a core collection for the INERA Robusta coffee (Coffea canephora) field genebank from the Democratic Republic of Congo. From 730 shrubs to 263 unique genotypes to 10 plants with 93% of the alleles. Some wild stuff involved. Do the same for African plum?
Genetic diversity within landraces of barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) and its implications on germplasm collection and utilization. Maybe we should do core collections for each landrace?
Phenotyping and identification of target traits for de novo domestication of wheat wild relatives. Maybe we should try it with that wild African rice too.