Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

May 7, 2018May 7, 2018

Taking the pulse of legume research

The 7th International Food Legumes Research Conference started yesterday in Marrakesh. Like the World Cup, they happen only every four years, and are eagerly awaited. Unlike the World Cup, Brazil doesn’t feature much, and you can’t follow along on TV with a beer. There is, however, Twitter.

A short summary of Day 1 at the International Food Legumes Research Conference #IFLRC2018 @iflrc: https://t.co/jikEKvuKcI pic.twitter.com/uWPnx4xQVT

— ICARDA (@ICARDA) May 6, 2018

May 7, 2018May 7, 2018

Brainfood: Genebanks genomics, Improving forages, 3000 rices, Sweet potato dispersal, Diversity on farm double, Herbaria double, Phenotyping box, Invasives, Meta-meta-analysis, Rice domestication, Soil depth

Role of genomics in promoting the utilization of plant genetic resources in genebanks. Genebanks don’t need to do genomics themselves to benefit from genomics.
Improving the Yield and Nutritional Quality of Forage Crops. Case in point.
Genomic variation in 3,010 diverse accessions of Asian cultivated rice. Case in point. Multiple independent domestications. Tomorrow, the world.
Sweet potato dispersal or human transport? Maybe no evidence one way or another after all. Rebuttal of: Reconciling Conflicting Phylogenies in the Origin of Sweet Potato and Dispersal to Polynesia. And the counter to the rebuttal. This genomics stuff not so easy after all.
Review: Meta-analysis of the association between production diversity, diets, and nutrition in smallholder farm households. It’s not always there. But that would have been a high bar.
Agricultural diversification as an important strategy for achieving food security in Africa. Case in point. More diverse households and farming systems are more food secure, but only up to a point, and it depends on various factors. 43% of African cropland will be difficult to diversify.
Using herbaria to study global environmental change. Have been used to monitor the effects of climate change, habitat change, pollution and invasives on plants.
Green Digitization: Online Botanical Collections Data Answering Real‐World Questions. Gotta get the stuff digitized first though.
The ‘PhenoBox’, a flexible, automated, open‐source plant phenotyping solution. Somebody mention digitizing?
Dissecting the null model for biological invasions: A meta-analysis of the propagule pressure effect. The success of aliens is down to their numbers. Wonder if it works for pest and disease organisms too.
Are systematic reviews and meta-analyses still useful research? We are not sure. All righty then. Scrap the above.
Shattering or not shattering: that is the question in domestication of rice (Oryza sativa L.). From one of the authors, Debarati Chakraborty: Loss of shattering through sh4 is not a crucial step for rice domestication. Genetics, cultural anthropology and archaeology suggests that primitive agrarians were dependent on wild or semi-domesticated shattering rice.
Rooting for food security in Sub-Saharan Africa. Sub-Saharan Africa probably hasn’t the rootable soil depth for monster maize yields.

May 3, 2018

Animal genetic resources get new IMAGE

Nice monologue from Dr Sipke Joost Hiemstra, Director of the Centre for Genetic Resources, the Netherlands (CGN) at Wageningen University & Research and Head of the Animal Genetic Resources Group, on plant and animal genetic resources collections in Europe. But mainly animal genebanks, and what the Horizon2020 IMAGE project is doing about them.

May 2, 2018

Managing crop breeding data

“It is truly a ‘one-stop-shop’ for the global yam breeding community,” said Ismail Rabbi, a geneticist at IITA and member of the new yam project. “We adopted an ‘open data’ policy and therefore people can access the data from anywhere and help in the improvement of the crop.”

And there are similar resources for cassava, sweet potato and bananas, the common denominator being Lukas Muller at BTI. All these resources are focused very much on the management of material and data within breeding programmes. They have very different, but fairly limited, approaches to the question of linking back whatever the breeder does to accessions in genebanks. For example, it would be good to see DOIs catered for. Open data is all well and good, but open silos are still silos.

April 30, 2018May 2, 2018

Diverse takes on diversification

The time is right to make the transition from a staple grain processed agricultural system to an agricultural system that promotes diversity, nutrition, increased wealth, growth in incomes, through diversity and increase in high-value crops.

Nice to hear that, from Prabhu Pingali no less, director of the Tata-Cornell Institute for Agriculture and Nutrition at Cornell University, as part of an IFPRI special policy seminar: Tales of yield improvement and farewell to Mark Rosegrant.

Especially as a recent meta-analysis of the association between production diversity, dietary diversity and nutritional outcomes found an inconsistent picture:

but not surprising. "V effective in most situations" is high bar. Quite effective in some is more likely. Just have to find right situations

— Lawrence Haddad (@l_haddad) April 26, 2018

An example is the CCAFS study in Africa, which found that more diverse households and farming systems are more food secure, but only up to a point, and the association depends on a number of other, interacting factors.

As Lawrence Haddad so wisely says in his tweet above, you have to find the right situation. That may be complicated, but still worth doing.