Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

December 7, 2017December 7, 2017

Vavilov everywhere

A couple of weeks ago, the N.I. Vavilov Institute of Plant Genetic Resources (VIR) held the IV International Vavilov Conference “N.I. Vavilov’s Ideas in the Modern World.” I don’t know if the presentations will go online at some point, but I do have a hardcopy of the abstracts volume and could send a scan if anyone is really interested I suppose. ((Most of them are in Russian, though.)) I hope that that doesn’t turn out to be a hostage to fortune.

And let me take the opportunity of thanking the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society for making the contents of the N.I. Vavilov Centenary Symposium from 1990 freely available.

December 7, 2017December 8, 2017

Agricultural biodiversity neglected in sustainability index

A new measure of the sustainability of food production is out, thanks to The Economist Intelligence Unit ((Who also do a Global Food Security Index.)) and the Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition, and making a splash, at least with the countries that come out with a high score. It considers agricultural sustainability, food loss and waste and nutritional challenges at a country level. Among the more than 60 indicators which go into making up the index you’ll find “agricultural diversification” (the share of total agricultural production represented by the top 3 crops) and something called “environmental biodiversity.” This last turns out to be the “Proportion of local breeds classified as being at risk of extinction” which of course is SDG Indicator 2.5.2, as we saw yesterday. That seems to be a little light on agricultural biodiversity (quite apart from the fact that the particular indicator has a lot of missing values). Have the compilers not heard of the Agrobiodiversity Index? Or of the other indicators under SDG Target 2.5?

December 6, 2017December 6, 2017

Where does the SDG indicator data come from?

Just a quick reminder that the new Domestic Animal Diversity Information System (DAD-IS) is now live on the FAO website, as recently predicted. This is the source for SDG indicators 2.5.1 and 2.5.2.

I’ve actually just come back from a meeting at FAO organized by the plant equivalent of DAD-IS, the World Information and Early Warning System (WIEWS) on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, which funnels data into the plant part of indicator 2.5.1. More on that later.

December 5, 2017December 6, 2017

Cool coconut diversity posters

And totally free. Thanks, Roland.

December 5, 2017

Brainfood: Setaria diversity, Planteome, Cowpea diversity, Fertile Crescent CWR, Beer flavour, Marula diversity, Wild dates

Genetic Structure of Foxtail Millet Landraces. China is the centre of diversity, and diversity structured geographically there.
The Planteome database: an integrated resource for reference ontologies, plant genomics and phenomics. A sort of ontology of ontologies.
Genetic diversity and structure of Iberian Peninsula cowpeas compared to world-wide cowpea accessions using high density SNP markers. Iberian material all falls into 1 (S Europe-N Africa) of 4 worldwide groups.
Setting conservation priorities for crop wild relatives in the Fertile Crescent. 220 priority species.
Effects of Barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) Variety and Growing Environment on Beer Flavor. It’s not just the hops.
Molecular Characterization of Sclerocarya birrea ICRAF Field Genebank Collections. Even the duplicates identified could be good for something.
The Domestication Syndrome in Phoenix dactylifera Seeds: Toward the Identification of Wild Date Palm Populations. Fancy maths shows there may be actual wild date palms in Oman.