- 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.
Participatory crop improvement position in Nepal
Based in a Bioversity’s office in Nepal, the incumbent will work with partners and stakeholders at the global, national and local levels in implementing Bioversity’s strategy and research agenda in crop genetic diversity and participatory crop improvement.
Interested? Yeah I thought you might be.
Brainfood: Tunisian carrots, Benin & CC, Tree variation, Grape phenotyping, Small ruminant domestication, Rio herbarium, Barley domestication, Millet groupings, Greek cheese
- Genotyping-by-sequencing reveals the origin of the Tunisian relatives of cultivated carrot (Daucus carota). D. carota subsp. gummifer is different.
- Impacts of climate change on cropping patterns in a tropical, sub-humid watershed. Recent advances in both rainfed and irrigated cropping in central Benin will be undone. Genetics to the rescue?
- Is local trait variation related to total range size of tropical trees? No.
- High-Precision Phenotyping of Grape Bunch Architecture Using Fast 3D Sensor and Automation. Next, put it on a drone.
- Convergent genomic signatures of domestication in sheep and goats. Same genes, different selection pressures.
- Herbarium collection of the Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden (RB), Brazil. Any crops wild relatives? Pretty sure there must be.
- Targeted resequencing reveals genomic signatures of barley domestication. Distinct ancestor populations at eastern and western ends of the Fertile Crescent implicated in domestication.
- Towards Defining Heterotic Gene Pools in Pearl Millet [Pennisetum glaucum (L.) R.Br.]. Hybrid pearl millet is just around the corner.
- Biodiversity and microbial resistance of lactobacilli isolated from the traditional Greek cheese kopanisti. Impressive biodiversity, alarming resistance.
Lost rice found, again
First there was Carolina Gold. Now there is “upland red bearded” or “Moruga Hill” rice.
Mr. Dennis had heard about hill rice…through the culinary organization Slow Food USA and the Carolina Gold Rice Foundation, the group that brought back Carolina Gold in the early 2000s. He’d also heard stories about it from elderly cooks in his community. Like everyone else, he thought the hill rice of the African diaspora was lost forever.
But then, on a rainy morning in the Trinidad hills in December 2016, he walked past coconut trees and towering okra plants to the edge of a field with ripe stalks of rice, each grain covered in a reddish husk and sprouting spiky tufts.
“Here I am looking at this rice and I said: ‘Wow. Wait a minute. This is that rice that’s missing,’” he said.
It is hard to overstate how shocked the people who study rice were to learn that the long-lost American hill rice was alive and growing in the Caribbean. Horticulturists at the Smithsonian Institution want to grow it, rice geneticists at New York University are testing it and the United States Department of Agriculture is reviewing it. If all goes well, it may become a commercial crop in America, and a menu staple as diners develop a deeper appreciation for African-American food.
And no, they couldn’t have found it in genebanks. 1 This is what Genesys knows from the region. Trinidad is shown by the yellow marker, rice accessions in red. No rice accessions in Genesys from anywhere near Trinidad, alas.
Someone should really have a systematic look at all those red dots, though.
That Pawnee corn thread
As one of those who prefers not to visit some social sites unless I need to, let’s see whether this works.