- Economic benefits from plant species diversity in intensively managed grasslands. More species means more milk, more money and less risk.
- Community structure of soil fungi in a novel perennial crop monoculture, annual agriculture, and native prairie reconstruction. Perennial monoculture not unlike native prairie.
- Origins and insights into the historic Judean date palm based on genetic analysis of germinated ancient seeds and morphometric studies. Ancient Judean dates may have come from further east.
- Genetic diversity and traditional uses of aboriginal grape (Vitis vinifera L.) varieties from the main viticultural regions of Armenia. 71 genotypes, no less.
- Mapping tree species vulnerability to multiple threats as a guide to restoration and conservation of tropical dry forests. About 50% of the distribution of 50 trees in northwestern Peru and southern Ecuador is vulnerable.
- Canine olfactory detection of a vectored phytobacterial pathogen, Liberibacter asiaticus, and integration with disease control. Dogs can sniff out a nasty citrus disease.
- The Rural Household Multiple Indicator Survey, data from 13,310 farm households in 21 countries. 758 variables, no less.
- Local Solutions for Sustainable Food Systems: The Contribution of Orphan Crops and Wild Edible Species. Increasing dietary diversity, more market opportunities for smallholders, and more attention to biodiversity conservation. Do orphan crops feature among the 758 variables above?
- Breeder friendly phenotyping. Focused, rapid and precise. Much like me, then?
- Genomics of sorghum local adaptation to a parasitic plant. Why we need on-farm conservation.
- Mapping patterns of abiotic and biotic stress resilience uncovers conservation gaps and breeding potential of Vigna wild relatives. Sources of resistance to biotic stresses are more common than to abiotic stresses, in terms of the number of species that have them.
- Archaeobotanical evidence of food plants in Northern Italy during the Roman period. Nice take-homes from Dr Lisa Lodwick on Twitter.
- The environmental consequences of climate-driven agricultural frontiers. Areas newly suitable for one or more crops store a lot of C, cover a lot of important watersheds and are home to a lot of biodiversity.
Power on Your Plate
That’s the catchy title of a forthcoming conference on African indigenous vegetables, to be held 25-28 May 2020 in Arusha, Tanzania. Here’s the somewhat more clunky subhead: An All-Africa Summit on Diversifying Food Systems with African Traditional Vegetables to Increase Health, Nutrition and Wealth.
Regular readers of this blog will know that we have a thing for African leafy greens here, so we’ll be keeping a beady eye on this one. Thanks to the World Vegetable Centre for organizing it.
BTW, I’ve just noticed that WorldVeg has a new (at least to me) way to search for research on vegetables etc., called HARVEST.
And since I’m at it, kudos for including a link to the genebank on the banner at the top of the conference website, as well as the institute homepage. Kinda wish CGIAR centres did that too…
Oh, and the WorldVeg genebank is contributing to the largest ever deposit event to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.
Brainfood: Ethiopian ABS, Horse double, Grapevine double, Naked barley, Sub clover diversity, Soybean diversity, USDA sorghum, Chicken diversity double, VAM, Oz wild rice
- Against the grain? A historical institutional analysis of access governance of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture in Ethiopia. Culture, economics and politics.
- Early Pastoral Economies and Herding Transitions in Eastern Eurasia. Everything changed around 1200 BC. Starting in Mongolia.
- Genetic diversity within and between British and Irish breeds: The maternal and paternal history of native ponies. Diversity within breeds being maintained, global haplotypes well represented, but a couple of breeds pretty unique. Long way from Mongolia.
- Diversity buffers winegrowing regions from climate change losses. Gotta change your cultivars.
- Contribution de la biodiversité à l’éco-oenotourisme des vignobles héroïques: atouts et perspectives. You can’t change your cultivars.
- Marker-assisted selection in a global barley (Hordeum vulgare subsp. vulgare) collection revealed a unique genetic determinant of the naked barley controlled by the nud locus. One genetic variant, from East Asia, makes barley naked.
- Morphological diversity within a core collection of subterranean clover (Trifolium subterraneum L.): Lessons in pasture adaptation from the wild. The Australian cultivars have similar morphological diversity to the core collection, and several morphological characters are probably adaptive.
- Genome-wide genetic diversity is maintained through decades of soybean breeding in Canada. After an initial decline, though, and there’s more out there.
- Evaluation of genetic diversity, agronomic traits, and anthracnose resistance in the NPGS Sudan Sorghum Core collection. 10% country subset of a 10% core subset of >40,000 accessions contains multiple anthracnose resistance sources, and lots of other diversity.
- Phylogeny and conservation priority assessment of Asian domestic chicken genetic resources. 7 clades, 3 centres of origin, northern Yunnan the highest priority for conservation.
- European and Asian contribution to the genetic diversity of mainland South American chickens. Alas, no evidence of a pre-Columbian Polynesian contribution. Yunnan, that’s another story.
- Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi affect the concentration and distribution of nutrients in the grain differently in barley compared with wheat. Differently as in opposite directions.
- Molecular and Morphological Divergence of Australian Wild Rice. Including a putative new taxon.
Not that kind of flesh
Oh, Twitter, you’re such a tease.
Knowing that I am currently working on orange-fleshed sweetpotatoes, Luigi kindly sent me a link to a tweet. This one:
That red ellipse? I’m drawing your attention to Twitter’s warning that seeing the images might bring on an attack of the vapours in highly-attuned personalities.
Is it just the word “fleshed”? I had to know.
I dunno. “Filth,” they say, “is in the mind of the beholder” and I have to say, I’m not seeing it.
Orange-flesh, though. Where else have I seen that? Maybe that’s what Twitter is trying to warn me against.
No matter. Congratulations to @CIPotato and @RTB_CGIAR.
Sweet poster on bitter gourds from WorldVeg
Had no idea Asian countries were so particular about their bitter gourds. About 500 accessions in the world’s genebanks to play with.