Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

December 4, 2023

Reasons to be cheerful

Just noticed I haven’t posted in over three weeks. Sorry about that. But there is a good reason: work.

First there was the Global Crop Diversity Summit in Berlin.

Then there was the 10th Session of the Governing Body of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture in Rome. The Summit communique was presented to delegates, who welcomed its call for more support to genebanks.

Then there was the Phase 2 meeting of the Vision for Adapted Crops and Soils (VACS) in New York. That vision will arguably depend on the sort of access to genetic diversity that genebanks provide and the Treaty facilitates.

And now of course there is COP28 in Dubai, with its particular focus on the need for transforming agrifood systems.

Which takes us back to the Summit and its call that we need to empower genebanks if that transformation is going to work. And to the Treaty. And indeed to VACS and its focus on less-known crops.

And actually there has been good news already in Dubai bringing all those strands together. Check out the last item on this list of projects that will be supported by Norway.

But don’t worry, normal service will be renewed here soon.

November 8, 2023December 11, 2023

More on de-coupled ABS

Readers with a longish memory and a liking for exploring the further reaches of biodiversity Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) policy will probably recall a post from a couple of years ago featuring the thoughts of Dr Amber Hartman Scholz. Well, you can now get another shot of the same, via a paper which Dr Scholz has recently co-authored with Dr Michael Halewood, a researcher at the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT (and the CGIAR Genebanks Initiative), and others.

They call for a radically new approach: simple, broad, unavoidable, guaranteed and harmonized. Too good to be true? Check it out.

October 30, 2023

Roots and tubers to the rescue

The latest Seed Systems newsletter from the Alliance of Bioversity & CIAT has an interesting roundup of examples of the role of root and tuber crops in crisis situations:

I think we may have included some of these in recent Nibbles and Brainfoods, but it’s nice to have them all together.

October 23, 2023October 24, 2023

Liberating heirlooms

Jeremy’s latest Eat This Newsletter has a dissection of the recent piece on heirlooms from The Guardian that we Nibbled a couple of days back. Plus a whole bunch of other interesting stuff, from food riots to Peruvian limes. Read it!

Intellectual property rights and heirloom seed savers are doing their best to keep things just the way they are, but is that a good thing? The heirlooms of today were created to meet the needs of yesterday, and that’s fine for people who still have those needs. But where are the breeders meeting the needs of non-industrial growers today? They are around, of course, but Chris Smith, writing in The Guardian, thinks seedsavers should stop obsessing over heirloom seeds and let plants change.

He definitely has a point. Laser-like focus on variety preservation does block the possibility of adaptive change to new circumstances. But anyone who know how to keep an open-pollinated variety pure already knows enough to cultivate more diversity and select from that, if they choose to. A farmer like Chris Smith has the land and the inclination to do both, and it doesn’t seem to stop the seed enterprises with which he is associated from offering presumably true-to-type heirloom varieties. I suppose what I am saying is to let a thousand flowers bloom. Preserve the old varieties and use them, with perhaps a pinch of commercial and genebank varieties in the mix, to create and select tomorrow’s heirlooms.

October 23, 2023October 20, 2023

Brainfood: Maize, Chickpea, CWR, Canola, Coconut, Avocado, Eggplant, Carrot, Watermelon, Citrus, Potato, Pearl millet, Roses

A New Methodological Approach to Detect Microcenters and Regions of Maize Genetic Diversity in Different Areas of Lowland South America. Multiple disciplines identify 4 microcenters of maize diversity in the lowlands of South America.
Historical Routes for Diversification of Domesticated Chickpea Inferred from Landrace Genomics. Genomics identifies both Indian and Middle Eastern traces in Ethiopian chickpeas.
Crop wild relatives in Lebanon: mapping the distribution of Poaceae and Fabaceae priority taxa for conservation planning. Spatial analysis identifies a couple of key ex situ and in situ conservation areas for CWR in Lebanon.
Analysis of gaps in rapeseed (Brassica napus L.) collections in European genebanks. Spatial analysis identifies a few key ex situ and in situ conservation areas for rapeseed wild relatives in Europe.
Genomic and population characterization of a diversity panel of dwarf and tall coconut accessions from the International Coconut Genebank for Latin America and Caribbean. Characterization of various sorts identifies different Atlantic and Pacific coconut genepools in the Western Hemisphere.
Pleistocene-dated genomic divergence of avocado trees supports cryptic diversity in the Colombian germplasm. Genomics identifies a uniquely Colombian avocado genepool.
Analysis of >3400 worldwide eggplant accessions reveals two independent domestication events and multiple migration-diversification routes. Genomics identifies separate Southeast Asia and Indian areas of domestication, and limited exchange between them.
Population genomics identifies genetic signatures of carrot domestication and improvement and uncovers the origin of high-carotenoid orange carrots. Genomics identifies wester-central Asia as the area of carrot domestication in the Early Middle Ages, and western Europe as the place where the orange variant was selected in the Renaissance.
A Citrullus genus super-pangenome reveals extensive variations in wild and cultivated watermelons and sheds light on watermelon evolution and domestication. Pangenomics identifies a gene in wild Kordofan melons as promoting the accumulation of sugar in watermelon.
Pangenome analysis provides insight into the evolution of the orange subfamily and a key gene for citric acid accumulation in citrus fruits. Pangenomics identifies south central China as the primary centre of origin of the genus Citrus.
Pangenome analyses reveal impact of transposable elements and ploidy on the evolution of potato species. Pangenomics identifies wild species from North and Central America as having lots of genes for abiotic stress response, but also fewer transposable elements.
Pangenomic analysis identifies structural variation associated with heat tolerance in pearl millet. Pangenomics identifies the key genes and structural variations associated with pearl millet accessions from the most hot and dry places.
Dark side of the honeymoon: reconstructing the Asian x European rose breeding history through the lens of genomics. Genomics and other data identifies a shift from a European to a mainly Asian genetic background in cultivated roses during the 19th century, leading to a narrowing of genetic diversity.