Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

February 25, 2019

Sad news from the coconut world

This came in recently from the Google group on the coconut:

It is with great sadness that I write to tell you of the death of my father, Hugh Harries, moderator of the Coconut Time Line. Many of you will have known Dad personally and others will have come across his work in the field. Some of you may have known he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease in 2006. He passed away peacefully on 7 February 2019 with his family around him. His funeral will take place in Weymouth, England, this Friday 22 February.

I know Dad would want the Coconut Time Line and Knowledge Network to continue after him. Please contact me directly if you think you might be able to help in this regard.

Richard Harries r.harries[at]gmail.com

Hugh was well know to this blog. Sad news.

February 25, 2019February 25, 2019

Brainfood: Improvement recapitulates domestication, Functional variation, Intensification, Gender & nutrition, Collaboration double, Losses, AgRenSeq , Crocus domestication, Saffron evolution, Mascarene CWR, Mexican CWR, ABS, Sweet cocoa, Tasty fruits, Baobab diversity

How can developmental biology help feed a growing population? By figuring out how domestication hacked developmental processes.
Distinct characteristics of genes associated with phenome-wide variation in maize (Zea mays). Analyzing a lot of traits at a time identifies a different set of phenotypically causal genes than more conventional single-trait approaches. What it all means in practice I have no idea, you tell me.
Sunflower pan-genome analysis shows that hybridization altered gene content and disease resistance. Not only is one trait not enough, one genome is not enough.
Agriculturally productive yet biodiverse: human benefits and conservation values along a forest-agriculture gradient in Southern Ethiopia. Depends what you mean by productive.
Does providing agricultural and nutrition information to both men and women improve household food security? Evidence from Malawi. Yes.
Principles of effective collaboration in agricultural development and research for impact. Learn from the birds.
Opening the dialogue: Research networks between high‐ and low‐income countries further understanding of global agro‐climatic challenges. See above. Maybe.
The global burden of pathogens and pests on major food crops. About 20%. We talked about this…
Resistance gene cloning from a wild crop relative by sequence capture and association genetics. A new way to reduce the above, using crop wild relatives.
Adding color to a century‐old enigma: multi‐color chromosome identification unravels the autotriploid nature of saffron (Crocus sativus) as a hybrid of wild Crocus cartwrightianus cytotypes. Which means you can now re-synthesize it.
Crop wild relative diversity and conservation planning in two isolated oceanic islands of a biodiversity hotspot (Mauritius and Rodrigues). Basically coffee.
Diversity and conservation priorities of crop wild relatives in Mexico. Over 300 species, but not coffee.
Benefit sharing mechanisms for agricultural genetic diversity use and on-farm conservation. Profit-sharing is better for conservation than technology transfer.
Are Cocoa Farmers in Trinidad Happy? Exploring Factors Affecting their Happiness. Well, those whose main crop was not cacao are happier, which must say something.
Edible fruits from Brazilian biodiversity: A review on their sensorial characteristics versus bioactivity as tool to select research. Eat Anacardium occidentale, Passiflora edulis and Acrocomia aculeata to be happiest. Seems very unadventurous, though.
Genetic differentiation in leaf phenology among natural populations of Adansonia digitata L. follows climatic clines. Anyone going to do this for all those Brazilian fruits?

February 18, 2019January 31, 2019

Brainfood: Gene mining, Using genebanks, Wild tomato hybrids, Domestication genes, Intensification, Cicer photoperiod, China ABS, Hybridization, Conservation vs livelihoods, Flax evolution, Clean cassava

Seeing nature as a ‘universal store of genes’: How biological diversity became ‘genetic resources’, 1890–1940. “Beyond the space-time of Neo-mendelian and Morganian laboratory genetics, genes became understood though a geographical gaze at a planetary scale.”
Harnessing the potential of germplasm collections. Start with diverse germplasm, then edit in domestication genes.
Spatial proximity determines post-speciation introgression in Solanum. But said introgression is not that important, in the grand evolutionary scheme of things, at least for these wild tomatoes.
Understanding Grass Domestication through Maize Mutants. It’s not straightforward, because domestication genes work differently in maize, because of differences in regulation.
May innovation on plant varieties share agricultural land with nature, or spare land for it? It may do both, under certain conditions. If I understand the economics jargon correctly.
Photoperiod Response of Annual Wild Cicer Species and Cultivated Chickpea on Phenology, Growth, and Yield Traits. They need 15-18h to flower.
China’s Legal Issues in the Access and Benefit-sharing of the Genetic Resources. …need addressing urgently.
Insights from genomes into the evolutionary importance and prevalence of hybridization in nature. It’s everywhere, but whether it’s adaptive is hard to prove. One crop example: common bean.
Incorporating basic needs to reconcile poverty and ecosystem services. Complicated but workable methodology to identify the win-win solution space.
Flax latitudinal adaptation at LuTFL1 altered architecture and promoted fiber production. Flax became a fibre crop when it was carried north into Europe as a result of adaptation to higher latitudes, including by introgression from local wild species.
A method for generating virus-free cassava plants to combat viral disease epidemics in Africa. Chemo- and thermotherapy in tissue culture.

February 15, 2019

Herbemont redux

When phylloxera broke out in Europe in the 1860s and 70s, many of the resistant hybrid vines in North America were uprooted and shipped across the Atlantic to save the European wine industry. The unfortunate consequence was that most plantings of Herbemont (and several other American varieties) were destroyed. In the 1920s, Prohibition disrupted winemaking in the US. When the industry took off again in the 1930s, tastes had changed and high-quality dry wines had fallen out of favor. When high-quality wine started to become popular again, in the latter half of the 20th century, European Vitis vinifera varieties were often emphasized at the expense of American varieties such as Herbemont. Just a handful of producers still make Herbemont wines. Thankfully, efforts are now underway to reintroduce and promote the Herbemont grape in several states across the South.

It now turns out, one place they might reintroduce it from is South Africa.

These two simple tests provide good preliminary evidence that the 95-year old Wynberg Village grapevine is probably an ancient clone of the true original Herbemont hybrid rootstock cultivar, which I believe is in real danger of becoming extinct for historical reasons.

Though of course there are also genebanks.

February 11, 2019

Historical plant exploration film comes to light

You may not have heard of USDA plant explorers David Fairchild and Palemon Howard Dorsett, but they are among those who have had the greatest impact on what we eat in the United States. Now a silent film of their 1925–26 collecting trip to Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Sumatra, and Java has been found by the National Agricultural Library (NAL).

Pretty stunning it is too.