- Multiple origins and a narrow genepool characterise the African tea germplasm: concordant patterns revealed by nuclear and plastid DNA markers. It’s a “potpourri,” but kinda missing Chinese Assam stuff.
- The eastern part of the Fertile Crescent concealed an unexpected route of olive (Olea europaea L.) differentiation. It was in Iran before domestication.
- Identifiers for the 21st century: How to design, provision, and reuse persistent identifiers to maximize utility and impact of life science data. Why DOIs succeeded, and why something like them needs to be applied to biological specimens, including genebank accessions, to combat “desultory citation practices”. But we knew that.
- Speed breeding: a powerful tool to accelerate crop research and breeding. Can double the number of generations per unit time with fully-enclosed controlled-environment growth chambers.
- Evidence for two domestication events of hyacinth bean (Lablab purpureus (L.) Sweet): a comparative analysis of population genetic data. With the 2-seeded group domesticated in Ethiopia, the 4-seeded somewhere else in Africa.
- Refinement of the collection of wild peas (Pisum L.) and search for the area of pea domestication with a deletion in the plastidic psbA-trnH spacer. Maybe not Turkey.
- The effectiveness of celebrities in conservation marketing. Use carefully, and evaluate.
- Cannabis in Eurasia: origin of human use and Bronze Age trans-continental connections. Proto-Indo-Europeans were real stoners.
- Analysis of Three Sugarcane Homo/Homeologous Regions Suggests Independent Polyploidization Events of Saccharum officinarum and Saccharum spontaneum. It’s really complicated, not least because of plant breeders.
- Genomic Comparison of Indigenous African and Northern European Chickens Reveals Putative Mechanisms of Stress Tolerance Related to Environmental Selection Pressure. African chickens able to withstand high temperatures due to a region on chromosome 27 and European chickens low temperatures due to region on chromosome 2.
CILY in cassava: not so fast
So it turns out the article the previous post on the possibility of Côte d’Ivoire lethal yellowing phytoplasma (CILY) attacking cassava in that country may have been a bit premature. Dr Lava Kumar, virologist and Head of Germplasm Health Unit at IITA, left the following comment on my Facebook page:
Misleading! The symptoms on these leaves are typical cassava mosaic. Authors of this study happened to detect CILY in CMD infected plants and left it loose for interpretation. Reports of this kind can create needless phytosanitary bottlenecks. Wish NDR editorial review was better.
Time to wheel on Koch’s Postulates?
CILY jumps to cassava?
You know that disease that we said about a year ago was threatening coconut plantations (and, incidentally, a coconut genebank) in Côte d’Ivoire? Yeah, Côte d’Ivoire lethal yellowing phytoplasma (CILY) that’s the one, well remembered.
Well, it looks like it may be affecting cassava as well.
That’s not good. Not good at all.
To our knowledge this is the first report of a phytoplasma affecting cassava in Côte d’Ivoire. The findings suggest that cassava may be a potential alternative host for the CILY phytoplasma, which poses a serious threat for the food security of the smallholder coconut and cassava farmers, especially women in Grand-Lahou, Côte d’Ivoire.
Creating a Global Seed Conservation Directory
This form will be used to populate an online Seed Conservation Knowledge Hub – a directory of facilities, individuals, and expertise in all aspects of seed conservation. Your participation completing this form is supporting the development of a tool that will benefit the seed conservation community. The information you provide in this form (apart from your contact information, unless specified) will be included in an online directory on BGCI’s website.
Now why hasn’t someone thought of this before?
Brainfood: Wild foods, Maize in Guatemala, Wild lentils, Sorghum gaps, Ethiopian erosion, Chikanda barcoding, Brazil nut systems, Wild carrots, Ancient wild potato use, Wild wheat grains
- The role of wild fruits and vegetables in delivering a balanced and healthy diet. Not great, until they’re domesticated.
- Maize Diversity, Market Access, and Poverty Reduction in the Western Highlands of Guatemala. Forget maize.
- Evaluation of Wild Lentil Species as Genetic Resources to Improve Drought Tolerance in Cultivated Lentil. Environment explained drought response in wild lentils better than molecular classification.
- Geographical distribution, diversity and gap analysis of East African sorghum collection conserved at the ICRISAT genebank. Both Sudans.
- Explaining the Ethiopian farmers’ perceptions on potential loss of traditional crop varieties: A principal components regression analysis. Poor farmers know more, and care more, about loss of traditional landraces.
- High-throughput sequencing of African chikanda cake highlights conservation challenges in orchids. Those are very biodiverse cakes, but not in a good way.
- Revisiting the ‘cornerstone of Amazonian conservation’: a socioecological assessment of Brazil nut exploitation. It’s actually in pretty good shape, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be improved.
- Phylogenetic Prediction of Alternaria Leaf Blight Resistance in Wild and Cultivated Species of Carrots. Look for taller material in clade A.
- Starch granule evidence for the earliest potato use in North America. S. jamesii may have been used for 10,000 years in Utah.
- Genome-Wide Association Study of Grain Architecture in Wild Wheat Aegilops tauschii. Two genetic lineages, with big differences in grain width and weight.