- Climate change threatens crop diversity at low latitudes. At low latitudes maybe about a third of the production of 30 major crops shifts outside their climatic niche under 2-3°C global warming, and potential food crop diversity declines on half of global cropland, but potential diversity increases elsewhere. So that’s all good then?
- Dietary species richness provides a comparable marker for better nutrition and health across contexts. Dietary species richness (DSR) can be used as a marker for the nutrition and health. If DSR is related to production diversity, I guess that could mean trouble at lower latitudes?
- Socio-economic factors constrain climate change adaptation in a tropical export crop. Actually the reduction in suitable area is 60% for banana. And there’s a decline in yield too. Unclear what that will do to DSR.
- Plant evolutionary history is largely underrepresented in European seed banks. Would be interesting to apply this specifically to crops. Or even just crop wild relatives.
- The Idiot’s Guide to Effective Population Size. Can this be usefully applied to crops? I’d like to see how banana comes out.
- Digital Revolution in Farmer Fields: VarScout Unveils Kenya’s Varietal Landscape – The Case of Potato. I’d like to see how banana comes out.
- Genetic Diversity and Distinctiveness of Common Beans (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) Between Landraces and Formal Cultivars Supporting Ex Situ Conservation Policy: The Borlotti Case Study in Northern Italy. It’s difficult, but not impossible, to distinguish — and maintain — landraces of Borlotti beans apart from obsolete and modern cultivars. I wonder if VarScout would help.
- Oaxacan Green Dent maize is not from Oaxaca. Watch out for landrace names.
- Mucilage produced by aerial roots hosts diazotrophs that provide nitrogen in Sorghum bicolor. Not just maize. And another aspect of diversity to have to worry about.
- Cryptic diversity of cellulose-degrading gut bacteria in industrialized humans. And another… What’s the interaction with DSR though?
Data everywhere, again — or rather, still
A bit of a roundup of data stuff today. Things have been piling up in my to-blog folder, and the time has come to tidy up.
First up, and most relevant here, is the webinar on how to use Genesys. It’s long, admittedly, but well worth it if you have anything to do with genebanks. Genesys can accommodate phenomic data, of course, and coincidentally here’s a set of training materials on how to do characterization and evaluation of plant genetic resources.
The botanic gardens community has its own Genesys-type thing, called PlantSearch, and there’s been an upgrade recently that readers here might be interested in. All that’s missing for the trifecta is herbaria :)
Finally, you might want to combine provenance data from Genesys (or indeed the forest genetic resources databases we blogged about earlier this week) with different features of the environment, right? Right. So let me quickly point to new spatial datasets on the world’s soils and agro-ecological zonation (which, interestingly, allows you to upload the sort of KML files that Genesys can spit out), the extent of cropland in Africa, and — why not? — the global distribution of cattle, goats, sheep and horses.
Brainfood: Andean chefs, Tricot, Enset ploidy, Minor livestock, NUS meals, Cocoyam breeding, Millets in India, Brazilian fruits, Indian fruits
- Grains of Wisdom: Insights into the Minds of Top Chefs—A Synthesis of Expert Interviews and Literature. A good chef can make even quinoa palatable.
- Citizen science informs demand-driven breeding of opportunity crops. I wonder if tricot can make quinoa palatable. Never mind, it’s good for a lot of other things.
- Recurrent evolution of cryptic triploids in cultivated enset increases yield. Unclear if triploid enset is any more palatable than the diploid. Interesting that traditional knowledge picks up ploidy.
- Is there unrecognized potential in neglected livestock species in Sub-Saharan Africa? A systematic review of four selected species. The benefits include sustainability, nutrition and income, but not higher palatability apparently.
- Enhancing Nutrition and Cost Efficiency in Kenyan School Meals Using Neglected and Underutilized Species and Linear Programming: A Case Study from an Informal Settlement. Better palatability was not included in the linear programming, alongside such staples (geddit?) as cost and nutritional value. But it could be, right?
- Cocoyam (Xanthosoma sagittifolium (L.) Schott) genetic resources and breeding: a review of 50 years of research efforts. Unclear if enhanced palatability is a breeding aim. But it should be.
- Strengthening the millet economy: lessons from a South Indian case study. Palatability is not an issue. Drudgery is.
- The traditional knowledge about the biodiversity of edible Brazilian fruits and their pollinators: an integrative review. Presumably includes data on palatability? And ploidy :)
- Wild edible fruit utilization patterns in Garhwal himalaya (Uttarakhand, India): a multi-decadal perspective. Reasons for decline in consumption include limited traditional knowledge transfer, time constraints, migration, generation gap, and hygiene concerns. But not, apparently, palatability.
Finding one’s way through the forest of forest resources databases
As well as the 3rd State of the World’s Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, the 2nd State of the World’s Forest Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture was also launched at FAO Commission meeting the week before last. Some headline numbers? There are about 58,000 tree species worldwide, about 30% of whch are threatened and 1,400 and 1,100 species are included in in situ and ex situ conservation programs, respectively.
At least some of the data behind the forest report is to be found in FAO’s new global information system, SilvaGRIS, launched at the same time. SilvaGRIS joins a fairly crowded field — or perhaps I should forest — which includes various products from the World Agroforestry Centre, the restoration-focused Tree Diversity database, and Europe’s own portal EUFGIS. No doubt each does something different, but a guide through the thicket of resources might be useful.
Third global assessment of PGRFA sees the light of day at last
I spent all last week at the 20th Session of the FAO Commission on Genetic Resources in Rome: “[t]he Commission is the only permanent intergovernmental body that specifically addresses all components of biological diversity for food and agriculture.” As ever, there’s a great summary of the session at Earth Negotiations Bulletin. Maybe the most significant milestone was the launch of the Third Report on the State of the World’s Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, 15 years after the second report. FAO has a nice summary of the key findings. You know how we have been saying that there are 1750 genebanks in the world? Well, we can’t say that any more: due to a tighter definition, there are now 867 genebanks.
If you want some more fun numbers, elsewhere I have blogged about how the work of my own organization, the Global Crop Diversity Trust, is featured in the report.