Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

June 3, 2019June 4, 2019

Primary vs secondary domestications

The 18th Conference of the International Workgroup for Palaeoethnobotany is on in Lecce, Italy this whole week. Seems to be off to an interesting start…

https://twitter.com/ArchaeoMichael/status/1135487311465058306

Meanwhile, in Montpellier…

#harlan3 #DYNADIV very nice venue and a lot of sunshine for Harlan3 Montpellier pic.twitter.com/PhOeuIArzO

— Philippe Cubry (@philippecubry) June 3, 2019

June 3, 2019September 12, 2019

Brainfood: Plant blindness, African goats, Tissue culture, Phenotyping databases, Mekong transformation, African Fertile Crescent, Salty tomatoes, Pigeonpea domestication, Pharaonic watermelon, Apple domestication, Social media and PAs, Messaging, De novo domestication

Resetting the table for people and plants: Botanic gardens and research organizations collaborate to address food and agricultural plant blindness. There are so many ways to get people interested in plants.
A review on goats in southern Africa: an untapped genetic resource. 500-600 years of natural selection must count for something.
Agromorphologic, genetic and methylation profiling of Dioscorea and Musa species multiplied under three micropropagation systems. Methylation at some loci, but no phenotypic differences.
Modelling Crop Genetic Resources Phenotyping Information Systems. Field to figures.
Agricultural and food systems in the Mekong region: Drivers of transformation and pathways of change. Corn everywhere.
Yam genomics supports West Africa as a major cradle of crop domestication. The Niger River Basin, to be precise. How long before corn takes over?
A diversity of traits contributes to salinity tolerance of wild Galapagos tomatoes seedlings. 3 out of 67 accessions of 2 wild endemic species showed particularly high salinity tolerance.
Cajanus cajan (L.) Millsp. origins and domestication: the South and Southeast Asian archaeobotanical evidence. Here’s ground zero for domestication starting about 5000 years ago: 19.397833, 80.813132.
A 3500-year-old leaf from a Pharaonic tomb reveals that New Kingdom Egyptians were cultivating domesticated watermelon. A Nile Valley origin?
Origins of the Apple: The Role of Megafaunal Mutualism in the Domestication of Malus and Rosaceous Trees. Large fruits originally evolved to attract wild horses, deer and bears, which spread them far and wide; populations isolated by the Ice Age were brought back together by humans.
Assessing global popularity and threats to Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas using social media data. Accessibility and infrastructure more important than biodiversity.
Messaging matters: A systematic review of the conservation messaging literature. Communications professionals think that more input from communications professionals is needed for conservation professionals to communicate professionally.
De Novo Domestication: An Alternative Route toward New Crops for the Future. Lots to play with, that’s for sure.

May 30, 2019

Bah, humbug!

I don’t like the International Day for Biological Diversity much…

Find out why on the work blog.

May 27, 2019January 6, 2020

Brainfood: Napier diversity, Clover expansion, Social media & conservation, Orphan crops double, Rewilding chestnut, N-fixing trees, Horse diversity double, Steppe weed, Old medicinals, Wild dates, Sorghum resistance

Genotyping by sequencing provides new insights into the diversity of Napier grass (Cenchrus purpureus) and reveals variation in genome-wide LD patterns between collections. Complementarity between ILRI and Embrapa collections.
Breaking Free: the Genomics of Allopolyploidy-facilitated Niche Expansion in White Clover. From two quite different, specialized habitats, to a global presence, through polyploidy.
Likes, comments, and shares of marine organism imagery on Facebook. Use really nice pictures, and don’t worry too much about the captions.
African Orphan Crops Consortium (AOCC): status of developing genomic resources for African orphan crops. 150 African breeders trained, one or more forms of sequence data produced for 60 crops, reference genome sequences for 6 species published, 6 near completion, 19 in progress.
The role of genetics in mainstreaming the production of new and orphan crops to diversify food systems and support human nutrition. Well it’s a good job there’s the above, then.
Evaluation of sites for the reestablishment of the American chestnut (Castanea dentata) in northeast Georgia, USA. Overwhelmingly on federal land, which may or may not be a good thing.
Patterns of nitrogen‐fixing tree abundance in forests across Asia and America. Much rarer in Asia than in the Americas.
Tracking Five Millennia of Horse Management with Extensive Ancient Genome Time Series. Iberian and Siberian domesticated horse lineages went extinct, but the Muslim conquests injected some much-needed diversity.
Chinese Mongolian horses may retain early domestic male genetic lineages yet to be discovered. Wait, does Mongolian=Siberian?
Cannabis in Asia: its center of origin and early cultivation, based on a synthesis of subfossil pollen and archaeobotanical studies. The northeastern Tibetan Plateau, to be precise, with the first steppe communities.
Paleomedicine and the use of plant secondary compounds in the Paleolithic and Early Neolithic. Self-medication goes back a long time.
Genetic characterization of tertiary relict endemic Phoenix theophrasti populations in Turkey and phylogenetic relations of the species with other palm species revealed by SSR markers. Probably endangered.
Genome wide association analysis of sorghum mini core lines regarding anthracnose, downy mildew, and head smut. 9 photo-sensitive and 4 photo insensitive accessions are multiple sources for resistance to anthracnose, SDM and head smut.

May 23, 2019

Cheers!

I know we’re a day late, but let’s celebrate the International Day for Biological Diversity with antique yeast in a Belgian monastery.