Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

April 19, 2018April 19, 2018

How to treat those seeds right

The scientific program of this workshop will place seed longevity into a conservation context: ex situ conservation of genetic resources through in situ conservation of wild habitat. The role of seeds in conservation efforts is often marginalized or understated as simply a ‘means to an end.’ Yet, seed longevity is often the basis of successful conservation efforts because it underpins successful stand re-establishment after disturbance, efficient maintenance of crop diversity, and effective management decisions for commercial seed lots. Seed longevity is a complex trait, in which the environment of growth, harvest, processing and storage may interact in unpredictable ways with inherent seed traits. The longevity phenotype itself is difficult to measure as it encompasses both potential and risk, both of which can only be realized in the future.

“This workshop” is the 2nd Seed Longevity Workshop, at Ft Collins, Colorado, 30 July – 1 August 2018. Looks unmissable. I particularly like this bit from the programme:

Time will be reserved in each late afternoon for discussion of current and potentially controversial issues over refreshments:

Using accelerated conditions to forecast longevity; we do it for food and drugs, why not seeds? (led by Olivier Leprince and Julia Buitink, INRA France)

Improving seed banking best practices and standards (led by Fiona Hay, Aarhus Univ, Denmark)

What about seeds that don’t fit the longevity models? – intermediate/recalcitrant and exceptional (sensu Pence) seed paradigms (leaders TBD)

I hadn’t heard of “exceptional” species, but it turns out it just means those which are troublesome to conserve as seeds, because either recalcitrant or just not very prolific.

Anyway, looks like a lot of cool people will be there.

April 9, 2018April 9, 2018

Where to find stressed rice in Nigeria

So last week’s Brainfood led with a paper mapping various abiotic stresses affecting rice in Africa, noting that the next step would be to mash up the results with germplasm provenances.

Well, I decided to do it myself. Here’s the distribution of “iron-rich soils” in Nigeria and potentially affected rice area (the paper’s Fig. 8b), the latter coming from the SPAM project we have alluded to before as a source of data on crop cultivation.

The yellow rings are African rice landraces, the red dots all rice landraces, both from Genesys. If you click on the map, you’ll see it much better, and notice that there’s not much rice germplasm from the more brownish areas, denoting rice cultivation areas with Fe-richer soils. Should these be targets for collecting? Kind of depends if landraces are still grown in those places, but it’s a start.

April 9, 2018April 9, 2018

Brainfood: Vine breeding, Moroccan veggie erosion, Potato charisma, Pigeonpea diversity, Dietary diversity, Cannabis breeding, Cattle domestication, Late blight gene

Vitis vinifera L. fruit diversity to breed varieties anticipating climate changes. Nice, but isn’t this leaving it rather late?
The Deterioration of Morocco’s Vegetable Crop Genetic Diversity: An Analysis of the Souss-Massa Region. 80-90% loss in 30 years.
Interspecies Respect and Potato Conservation in the Peruvian Cradle of Domestication. Some varieties have more charisma than others.
Quantitative Analysis, Distribution and Traditional Management of Pigeon Pea [Cajanus Cajan (L.) Millsp.] Landraces’ Diversity in Southern Benin. Larger farms have slightly more varieties, otherwise difficult to find socioeconomic correlates of diversity; main criterion for choosing varieties is market value.
Higher agrobiodiversity is associated with improved dietary diversity, but not child anthropometric status, of Mayan Achí people of Guatemala. Diversifying diets won’t help without better toilets.
Dwarf germplasm: the key to giant Cannabis hempseed and cannabinoid crops. The mainstreaming of weed continues. The Man unavailable for comment.
Early North African Cattle Domestication and Its Ecological Setting: A Reassessment. No early North African cattle domestication after all?
Identification and rapid mapping of a gene conferring broad-spectrum late blight resistance in the diploid potato species Solanum verrucosum through DNA capture technologies. From Mexico with love.

April 3, 2018April 30, 2018

Brainfood: Rice stress maps, Saline rice, Forage millet, Diversification, Deforestation & diets, CC impacts, Elite cassava, Indian quarantine, Chinese urban ag, Squash diversity, Tomato minerals, Hidden hunger

Mapping abiotic stresses for rice in Africa: Drought, cold, iron toxicity, salinity and sodicity. Now to mash this up with germplasm provenance information…
Screening of rice landraces (Oryza sativa L.) for seedling stage salinity tolerance using morpho-physiological and molecular markers. …you know, so that this sort of thing could be predicted, perhaps.
Identification of promising sources for fodder traits in the world collection of pearl millet at the ICRISAT genebank. 14 out of 326. Difficult to predict from environmental data, though, I suspect.
Agricultural diversification as an important strategy for achieving food security in Africa. 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.
Deforestation and child diet diversity: A geospatial analysis of 15 Sub-Saharan African countries. Deforestation is bad for diet diversity. No word on overlap with the above mentioned 43%.
Two-thirds of global cropland area impacted by climate oscillations. I bet you that includes most of the above-mentioned 43%.
Exchanging and managing in-vitro elite germplasm to combat Cassava Brown Streak Disease (CBSD) and Cassava Mosaic Disease (CMD) in Eastern and Southern Africa. The devil is in the logistics.
Risk of pathogens associated with plant germplasm imported into India from various countries. See what I mean?
An exploration of the implication and feasibility of UAH (Urban Agricultural Heritages) in China. I for one really want to see the Xuanhua traditional vineyard system.
Genetic Resources in the “Calabaza Pipiana” Squash (Cucurbita argyrosperma) in Mexico: Genetic Diversity, Genetic Differentiation and Distribution Models. Balsas-Jalisco is a potential center of domestication. Isn’t it the same for maize?
Genetic differences in macro-element mineral concentrations among 52 historically important tomato varieties. Fairly strong and mostly independent, except for K and Mg.
The global burden of chronic and hidden hunger: Trends and determinants. Growth not as good on hidden hunger as on chronic. Let them eat tomatoes.

March 26, 2018March 26, 2018

Brainfood: Mesoamerican fruits, PES, Chinese vegetables, Controlled pollination, Pastoralist fodder, Taxonomy, African nightshades, Ag origins, Divortification

Human diets drive range expansion of megafauna-dispersed fruit species. Megafauna dropped the ball (or the fruit), humans picked it up and ran with it.
Experimental evidence on payments for forest commons conservation. Maybe we should have paid the megafauna.
Vegetable genetic resources in China. 3 genebanks, 36,000 accessions, 120 species, about 1000 distributions per year (to research units).
A cost-effective ground pollination system for hybridization in tall coconut palms. I have seen the future of coconut pollination.
Determinants of pastoral and agro-pastoral households’ participation in fodder production in Makueni and Kajiado Counties, Kenya. Household heads who are female, have access to extension services, or are members of social groups are more likely to go in for fodder production.
Taxonomy based on science is necessary for global conservation. Incredible to me that needs to be said.
Development of next-generation sequencing (NGS)-based SSRs in African nightshades: Tools for analyzing genetic diversity for conservation and breeding. Solanum scabrum and S. villosum separate nicely, and show much diversity.
A natural adaptive syndrome as a model for the origins of cereal agriculture. Large seed, awns and monodominance.
Development and Examination of Sweet Potato Flour Fortified with Indigenous Underutilized Seasonal Vegetables. Ticks all the boxes, lets call it divortification.