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Issues in Agricultural Biodiversity series

An important announcement from Danny Hunter and Michael Halewood of Bioversity.

Since publication of the first book back in 2010 the ‘Issues in Agricultural Biodiversity’ series has grown steadily. We continue to receive encouraging feedback and it is clear that for many in the agrobiodiversity community it is one of the ‘go to’ sources for information. As we move into 2017, we now have our tenth book title in the pipeline and we are hopeful it will be published later in the year to mark this landmark achievement. Ten titles in any book series is a reasonable achievement. But we don’t want to stop there. We want for the series to continue to grow and especially to expand its scope to other still neglected (from the series perspective) elements of agrobiodiversity, including new titles which demonstrate and explore more interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral approaches to the topic and which have much resonance in the 2030 agenda for sustainable development.

The series is a partnership between Bioversity International and Earthscan from Routledge. One of the advantages of publishing in the series through this partnership is we have an agreement that all books become freely available and open access after 9 months in hard copy.

With the beginning of a new year we would like to renew our call for new proposals. We are interested in proposals which address gaps in the current list of titles and are innovative in scope. These could address the following topics but we are open to all relevant and reasonable suggestions:

  • Agrobiodiversity and climate change
  • Agrobiodiversity and nutrition-sensitive agriculture interventions
  • Wild foods, seasonality and food security
  • Livestock and animal genetic resources
  • Fish, aquatic genetic resources
  • Soil biodiversity
  • Forests and tree genetic resources and non-timber forest products
  • Diverse agricultural systems, biodiversity and ecosystem services
  • Indigenous Peoples/Indigenous knowledge systems and agricultural biodiversity
  • Agrobiodiversity, human health and wellbeing
  • Agrobiodiversity, policy, access and benefit sharing
  • Promoting diversity in food systems: Interdisciplinary and cross sectoral approaches
  • Biodiversity, food cultures, gastronomy movements and sustainable food tourism
  • Diversifying food procurement and school feeding, sustainable and healthy food sourcing
  • Agrobiodiversity and sustainable consumption
  • Markets for diverse species
  • Agrobiodiversity and short supply chains
  • Innovative planning and policies for agrobiodiversity-rich sustainable food systems
  • Gender and agricultural biodiversity
  • Urban-rural, city-regions and the role of agricultural biodiversity
  • Agrobiodiversity and integrated landscape approaches

We warmly welcome your suggestions. If you have any questions just drop us a line. Finally, please do share this call as widely as possibly with your networks, colleagues and friends.

For anyone seeking further information please contact Danny Hunter (d_DOT_hunter_AT_cgiar_DOT_org) or Michael Halewood (m_DOT_halewood_AT_cgiar_DOT_org) at Bioversity International.

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CGRFA16 in full swing

Ah, yes, the Commission on PGRFA is meeting in Rome, for the sixteenth time.

Correction: It’s of course the Commission on Genetic Resources for Food & Agriculture, not just plants, as my original “PGRFA” suggested. My mistake. Sheer force of habit to include that “P.” The remit of the Commission has long included “animal, forest, aquatic and microbe/invertebrate genetic resources for food and agriculture, and guides an additional global assessment on biodiversity for food and agriculture.” Thanks to Irene Hoffman for the correction. Apologies all round.

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A moving botanic garden story

My new post over at work looks at some of the differences, and similarities, between the worlds of botanical gardens and genebanks.

The photo of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh which accompanies a tweet about the piece, though, is a bit out of date:

It turns out that the hedge archway now leads to the Botanic Cottage, which had to be moved there stone by stone from the previous location of the garden in order to save it.

It now even has a Twitter account.

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Perennial wheat, or xTritipyrum?

A few days ago we posted in Brainfood a link to the paper “Toward a taxonomic definition of perennial wheat: a new species ×Tritipyrum aaseae described,” together with the comment that it wasn’t clear to us why naming a new species was necessary. Colin Curwen-McAdams, one of the authors, has now enlightened us, by email.

As one of the authors of the paper mentioned today, “Toward a taxonomic definition of perennial wheat: a new species xTritipyrum aaseae described,” I thought I might respond to the comment about why it is necessary to name this combination as a new species. People have been trying to develop perennial grain crops through hybridization of wheat and its wild relatives for nearly 100 years, but no one has taken the time to recognize the combinations through nomenclature. These combinations are stable and contain genomes from both parents and so are no longer either wheat or wheatgrass. Scientific names allow researchers to communicate, literature to be organized and help structure our thinking about the relationships among living things. Names are also important in this case because the goal is development of a new crop type which requires specific and colloquial ways of referring to it. Triticale (xTriticosecale) is a corollary example, a hybrid of wheat and rye combining genomes from both that now exists as a new crop. The aim of the paper was to outline how having a name might aid in developing these new crops through hybridization, and move thinking away from ‘perennial wheat’ and towards xTritipyrum, an undefined crop full of potential. Thank you for recognizing our work, always happy to discuss further, all the best, Colin.

Many thanks, Colin. Is not a possible counter-argument that such a move is somewhat premature (xTritipyrum is not yet an established crops), and might discourage other groups from making further crosses between the two parents?

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Migrant coconuts

A couple of days ago, Jay Bost asked about the origin of coconuts in the Americas:

Anyone ever explore possibility of dispersal of coconut to Americas by Polynesians? Given movement of sweet potato and chickens, any chance they brought coconut?

The answer, it turns out, is out there. I take the liberty here of highlighting what might otherwise remain somewhat buried in a comment on a comment:

Gunn et al. (2011) suggest that the species, “a native of the Old World tropic…was spread to eastern Polynesia and subsequently introduced to the Pacific coasts of Latin America, most likely by pre-Columbian Austronesian seafarers from the Philippines”. Figure 2. is a great schematic showing coconut dispersal routes by humans