- On the post-glacial spread of human commensal Arabidopsis thaliana. A bit like Neanderthals.
- Exploration of the genetic diversity of cultivated potato and its wild progenitors (Solanum sect. Petota) with insights into potato domestication and genome evolution. Elite cultivars are a pretty diverse lot.
- Fundamental species traits explain provisioning services of tropical American palms. Bigger, more widespread species are more important to local people. Which means some useful things may be being missed.
- Genotyping-by-sequencing provides the first well-resolved phylogeny for coffee (Coffea) and insights into the evolution of caffeine content in its species: GBS coffee phylogeny and the evolution of caffeine content. Origin of the genus could be Africa. Or Asia. Or the Arabian Peninsula. So that narrows it down.
- A quiet harvest: linkage between ritual, seed selection and the historical use of the finger-bladed knife as a traditional plant breeding tool in Ifugao, Philippines. People kept old harvesting technology because it helped them show due reverence to the rice plant, and select seeds.
- Old Crop, New Society: Persistence and Change of Tartary Buckwheat Farming in Yunnan, China. It’s going down, but won’t disappear. No word on what’s happening to diversity though.
- Tapping the genetic diversity of landraces in allogamous crops with doubled haploid lines: a case study from European flint maize. The things people have to do to make use of landraces.
- Conservation of indigenous cattle genetic resources in Southern Africa’s smallholder areas: turning threats into opportunities — A review. We now the breeds, but not all their characteristics, and how to get the most out of them.
- The Importance of Endophenotypes to Evaluate the Relationship between Genotype and External Phenotype. Oh for pity’s sake, something else to worry about.
A Sardinian grasspea is recognized
Congratulations to the Italian company Sa Laurera for receiving the 2016 Arca Deli Award for its Sardinian grasspea variety Inchixa.
In 2016, the SAVE Foundation announced the Arca Deli Award which is dedicated to products derived from the cultivation of local rare or endangered varieties that were recovered and maintained on a farm and are appropriately valued. We chose to compete with our Inchixa.
At the annual meeting of the foundation held in Metlika, Slovenia in September the SAVE jury met to evaluate products that had entered the competition.
A few weeks ago, we were informed that we are among the six winners! Sa Laurera is the only Italian company to have won the Arca Deli Award 2016, and our grasspea is the first Sardinian pulse to receive international recognition.
From a toxic plant, contraindicated for human consumption, to an interesting crop that deserves to be reassessed for its nutritional and nutraceutical features: It is particularly rich in protein, containing around 30g of protein per 100g of edible seeds, and seems to have positive effects for the prevention of cardiovascular diseases and osteoporosis.
The Inchixa example shows that small-scale farm work can be a starting point for the recovery and development of forgotten foods.
Preparing grasspea to eat is hard work, so “recovery and development” of this “forgotten food” must have been quite a challenge. But not an insurmountable one, apparently.
In Sardinia, new generations and urban dwellers, who are increasingly sensitive to issues related to health, food and local gastronomic traditions, not only appreciate the legume but actively seek it out.
I couldn’t find Inchixa in any of the usual databases, but “the name comes from from the Catalan word Guixa,” and there are lots of accessions of things with this name in the Spanish genebank.
Other Sardinian local names for grasspea are Denti de bècia, Piseddu, Pisu-faa, Pisu a tres atzas. Propagation material used to start the recovery of landrace derives from small-scale cultivations of our relatives, who have mostly cultivated this crop for self-consumption.
Piseddu is the only one of these which I found on Genesys, collected in Sardinia and conserved in Germany. Thank goodness for those relatives, but I hope they put all of these landraces in a genebank somewhere. Perhaps ICARDA’s? They have very little from Italy, but lots from the rest of the area of the crop (click to enlarge the map).
Brainfood: Potato changes, Anti-carcinogenic kava, Horizontal barley, Genebank use, Lotus diversity, Rubber soul, CWR breeding, Andean PGR, Distribution modelling
- Genetic diversity of Bolivian wild potato germplasm: changes during ex situ conservation management and comparisons with resampled in situ populations. It’s all a bit of a lottery.
- Traditional preparations of kava (Piper methysticum) inhibit the growth of human colon cancer cells in vitro. Still tastes like crap, though.
- Multiple horizontal transfers of nuclear ribosomal genes between phylogenetically distinct grass lineages. 9 independent instances of non-sexual panicoid introgression into wild barley species.
- Who is sowing our seeds? A systematic review of the use of plant genetic resources in research. Ahem, researchers? Study of the UK Vegetable Genebank.
- Evaluation of Lotus corniculatus L. accessions from different locations at different altitudes reveals phenotypic and genetic diversity. Phenotype could be the same, and genotype still be different.
- De novo hybrid assembly of the rubber tree genome reveals evidence of paleotetraploidy in Hevea species. Which happened before Hevea and Manihot diverged.
- Potential Uses of Wild Germplasms of Grain Legumes for Crop Improvement. “A big international effort is underway with the aim to adapt agriculture to climate change, which includes collecting, protecting and preparing crop wild relatives. Several pulses are among the major targets: common bean, adzuki bean, chickpea, cowpea, faba bean, groundnut, lentil, lima bean, mung bean, pea, pigeonpea, soybean, urd bean and vetch [197,198]. The information generated and systematized from this project certainly will be a unique source of information and materials facing the current and futures challenges for agriculture in the context of crop wild relatives use.” How sweet.
- Assessing the Benefits of Andean Crop Diversity on Farmers’ Livelihood: Insights from a Development Programme in Bolivia and Peru. Private benefits can incentivize public ones.
- Modelling of species distributions, range dynamics and communities under imperfect detection: advances, challenges and opportunities. Beyond mere presence.
Everybody’s a comedian
.@AgroBioDiverse complicating the job for critical discourse analysts https://t.co/IPK934QIH1
— Ola Westengen (@OlaWestengen) February 17, 2017
All things tropical forages
Great article on improved tropical pastures by Dan Charles on NPR’s The Salt yesterday. Here’s the money quote:
According to Michael Peters, who leads CIAT’s research on tropical grazing, pastures made up of these grasses can support three times more cattle, compared to typical tropical pastures today. The animals also gain weight twice as quickly. It translates into a six-fold increase in production per acre, and a dramatic cut in greenhouse emissions.
“These grasses” are Brachiaria species, but of course there’s much more than just those in CIAT’s forages genebank. And then there’s ILRI’s forages genebank too. And a global strategy to rule them all. And a newsletter to subscribe to if you want to keep up to date.