Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

October 30, 2017October 30, 2017

New decade, newish look

There’ve been problems with our server. Those have been fixed, I think, but our old look is thoroughly broken as a result. I’m working on restoring some of that functional goodness. Bear with me.

p.s. Almost everything is back and working, but I need to work on the styling. Please let me know if you miss anything or something isn’t working.

October 30, 2017October 26, 2017

Brainfood: Rice introgression, African rice cores, Cereal domestication rates, Power vegetables, Biodiversity services, Afrikaner cattle diversity, Conservation funding

Introgression from cultivated rice alters genetic structures of wild relative populations: implications for in situ conservation. Not totally wild any more.
Genetic Variation and Population Structure of Oryza glaberrima and Development of a Mini-Core Collection Using DArTseq. 2,179 accessions, 5 geographic groups, 16% recover >95% of polymorphisms.
Geographic mosaics and changing rates of cereal domestication. Applying fancy maths to archaeobotanical remains shows that selection pressures varied in time, and started slow.
Tapping the economic and nutritional power of vegetables. Eat your veggies, damn it!
To what extent can ecosystem services motivate protecting biodiversity? Not enough.
Genetic diversity of Afrikaner cattle in southern Africa. 3 groups, but not geographically determined, and lots of diversity despite recent declines in numbers.
Nominal 30-m Cropland Extent Map of Continental Africa by Integrating Pixel-Based and Object-Based Algorithms Using Sentinel-2 and Landsat-8 Data on Google Earth Engine. Next level. But when will be be able to distinguish crops?
Reductions in global biodiversity loss predicted from conservation spending. But the impact of spending goes down with with increasing development pressure.

October 26, 2017

Pass the bottle

Bad news on the olive harvest in Italy and the grape harvest in France. Maybe production can move to Britain?

October 24, 2017October 25, 2017

There’s always something on the intertubes about “the Great British Apple” this time of year (ok, not only British), but instead of reading the rather turgid Guardian article, why don’t you do yourselves a favour and listen to Jeremy’s podcast from Irish Seed Savers instead?

October 23, 2017October 23, 2017

Brainfood: Yeast census, Kansas collections, Species abundance, Dietary diversity, Seed longevity, Tree conservation, Yam metabolomics, Ethiopian mustard shattering, Improving ITPGRFA

Census of Yeasts Isolated from Natural Ecosystem and Conserved in Worldwide Collections. 27 countries, 41 collections, 58,095 strains.
The Curiosity of Collections: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at What’s in the Drawers, Cabinets and Refrigerators of K-State Collections and Why It’s Important. Including the Wheat Genetics Resource Center.
Species are not most abundant in the centre of their geographic range or climatic niche. Even trees.
Tartary Buckwheat Genetic Diversity in the Himalayas Associated with Farmer Landrace Diversity and Low Dietary Dependence. Relying on fewer food crops is bad for crop genetic diversity.
Contrasting tocol ratios associated with seed longevity in rice variety groups. It’s the relative amounts of different homologues, not the total.
Gene conservation of tree species — Banking on the future. Proceedings of a workshop. USA-centred, but lessons more generally applicable.
Deep Learning for Multi-task Plant Phenotyping. Computer can count wheat spikes and spikelets.
Metabolite profiling of yam (Dioscorea spp.) accessions for use in crop improvement programmes. 200 compounds on 49 accessions in 4 species. But now what?
Molecular diversity analysis and genetic mapping of pod shatter resistance loci in Brassica carinata L. 5 QTLs for shatter resistance found in Australian collection. In other news, there’s an Australian collection of Ethiopian mustard.
Access without benefit-sharing: Design, effectiveness and reform of the FAO Seed Treaty. Hybrid SMTA/subscription model, gradual Annex I expansion, successively improving domestic implementation.

Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

Posts

New decade, newish look

Brainfood: Rice introgression, African rice cores, Cereal domestication rates, Power vegetables, Biodiversity services, Afrikaner cattle diversity, Conservation funding

Pass the bottle

Irish apples are smiling

Brainfood: Yeast census, Kansas collections, Species abundance, Dietary diversity, Seed longevity, Tree conservation, Yam metabolomics, Ethiopian mustard shattering, Improving ITPGRFA