Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

August 21, 2017August 21, 2017

When do people search for coconut?

Or any other food, for that matter, at least in the US. Well, now there’s The Rhythm of Food for all the answers, in nice visualizations to boot.

And if anyone knows why Americans do more searching for coconut during the winter holidays, and then again in spring, do tell us.

August 21, 2017August 21, 2017

Brainfood: Temperate maize, Pre-Neolithic Revolution, Social media, European maize

Genomic estimation of complex traits reveals ancient maize adaptation to temperate North America. “The diversity needed for high altitudes was there, but getting it in the right combination took 2,000 years,” says ancient maize DNA.
The deep human prehistory of global tropical forests and its relevance for modern conservation. There were “garden cities” in the tropical forests of equatorial Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia starting 45,000 years ago.
An Introduction to Social Media for Scientists. Choose wisely.
Is there an optimum level of diversity in utilization of genetic resources? It depends.

August 14, 2017August 2, 2017

Brainfood: Sustainability index, Beet wild relative, Participatory goats, Sarma, Wild wheat & drought, Ahipa conservation, Saving genebanks, Chinese cattle, Bolivia & CC, Seed systems, Cereal residues

Sustainability assessment of agricultural systems: The validity of expert opinion and robustness of a multi-criteria analysis. Experts know their stuff.
Genetic diversity of Patellifolia patellaris from the Iberian Peninsula, a crop wild relative of cultivated beets. 271 individuals, 10 sites, maybe 3 genetic groupings?
Production system and participatory identification of breeding objective traits for indigenous goat breeds of Uganda. Resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses are the priority.
Plant diversity for sarma in Turkey: nature, garden and traditional cuisine in the modernity. 73, including 3 endemics.
Identification of ecogeographical gaps in the Spanish Aegilops collections with potential tolerance to drought and salinity. Evaluation avant la lettre.
Trends and drivers of on-farm conservation of the root legume ahipa (Pachyrhizus ahipa) in Bolivia over the period 1994/96–2012. Price is too low.
The Vulnerability of Plant Genetic Resources Conserved Ex Situ. The problem: “…genebanks around the world are generally under stress, largely from inadequate public investment, weakened political support, and insufficient stakeholder engagement.” The solution: privatization, commodification, consolidation, prioritization, communication.
Species composition and environmental adaptation of indigenous Chinese cattle. Taurine-indicine cline N-S, with traces of banteng, gayal and yak.
Climate change and crop diversity: farmers’ perceptions and adaptation on the Bolivian Altiplano. Maintaining multiple varieties still done, despite not seen as climate adaptation.
A Risk Assessment Framework for Seed Degeneration: Informing an Integrated Seed Health Strategy for Vegetatively Propagated Crops. Actually not seed, but rather what to do about pathogen build-up in vegetative planting material. Turns out farmers can be quite good at producing clean material if they can choose healthy plants.
New criteria for the molecular identification of cereal grains associated with archaeological artefacts. Alkylresorcinols, basically.

August 11, 2017August 11, 2017

Composite provenancing for crops too?

I completely missed an interesting blog post by Prof. Andy Lowe of the University of Adelaide when it came out a couple of years ago. “Local is not always best” updates a paper in a previous article ((Lowe AJ (2010) Composite provenancing of seed for restoration: progressing the ‘local is best’ paradigm for seed sourcing. In: The State of Australia’s Birds 2009: Restoring Woodland Habitats for Birds. (Eds David Paton and James O’Conner). Supplement to Wingspan 20(1) pp 16-17.)) on where you should get your seeds from for habitat restoration projects. In summary, the answer is: not all from one, nearby place.

To simulate the natural mixing of genes during a restoration programme, it would be necessary to restore populations using a mixture of material sampled at different distances from the focal site, a practise defined as composite provenancing. This ‘composite provenance’ would be predominantly composed of locally sourced material, taken from genetically healthy stock, but would also incorporate local and ecogeographically matched sources. In addition, a smaller proportion of material, depending on the natural gene flow dynamics of the focal species (but usually somewhere between 10 and 30%), should be comprised of material from much further a field.

Though Prof. Lowe deals with wild species in his paper and blog post, I think “composite provenancing” is also be relevant for crops. Sometimes, too much is made of “genetic integrity” and localism.

August 8, 2017August 7, 2017

Low throughput phenotyping

A new breeding selection criterion for me: football bounce in turf breeding programme, Nanjing Inst Botany, Jiangsu https://t.co/1TDdXekCWo

— Pat Heslop-Harrison (@Pathh1) August 7, 2017

The first national botanical garden in China, apparently.