The Indian Journal of Plant Genetic Resources has published a special edition that includes the papers presented at the recent Agrobiodiversity Congress. Unfortunately, they are behind a paywall there, but you can download the whole thing from the Congress website, along with a bunch of other things.
Brainfood: New communities, New journal, New sustainability indicators, New rice yields, New chickpeas, New tree map, Old barley, New wheat dataset, New oat “core”, New ABS guide, New threats
- Mapping climatic mechanisms likely to favour the emergence of novel communities. New climate combinations are rare (3.4% of evaluated cells), but mean displacement moderately rapid (3.7 km per decade) and divergence high (>60° for 67% of cells). What will all this mean for CWR? As many are ruderals, maybe nothing?
- Why biodiversity matters. Inaugural issue of Nature Ecology & Evolution. Not much on agricultural biodiversity, alas.
- Bridging the practitioner-researcher divide: Indicators to track environmental, economic, and sociocultural sustainability of agricultural commodity production. Again, no surprise that biodiversity is hardly considered by either researchers or practitioners in monitoring sustainability, though that’s not the point of the paper.
- Plausible rice yield losses under future climate warming. More even than IFPRI thought: −8.3 ± 1.4% per degree.
- Recent breeding programs enhanced genetic diversity in both desi and kabuli varieties of chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.). But from a low baseline?
- EU-Forest, a high-resolution tree occurrence dataset for Europe. Want European tree diversity, go to the Pyrenees.
- Farmer fidelity in the Canary Islands revealed by ancient DNA from prehistoric seeds. New barley same as old barley.
- Evaluation of 19,460 Wheat Accessions Conserved in the Indian National Genebank to Identify New Sources of Resistance to Rust and Spot Blotch Diseases. 45 accessions had known resistance genes against all three rusts as well as a QTL for spot blotch resistance.
- Promoting the Use of Common Oat Genetic Resources through Diversity Analysis and Core Collection Construction. Interesting, but 21 out of 91 is hardly a core collection.
- Utilization of genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge in academic research. A good practice guide for access and benefit-sharing. Well there’s no excuse now.
- Identifying species threat hotspots from global supply chains. Global maps of which countries, and which commodities they consume, most endanger threatened species around the world.
Happy New Year
Yes, we’re back from the holidays, fully energized 1 and with a gargantuan helping of Nibbles to get your new year started the right way. There’s a Brainfood coming too, in the next day or two, before it goes back to its usual schedule of first thing Monday next week. Let us know if you came across anything during the past couple of weeks that we missed and you’d like to share with others interested in all thing agrobiodiverse. And don’t forget we tweet this sort of stuff all the time, even from the beach.
Brainfood: Rucola, PGR history, Camels & CC, Quality seed, Co-evolution, Dormancy
- Changes in rocket salad phytochemicals within the commercial supply chain: Glucosinolates, isothiocyanates, amino acids and bacterial load increase significantly after processing. Sitting around is good for rucola’s nutritional value.
- From “Genetic Resources” to “Ecosystems Services”: A Century of Science and Global Policies for Crop Diversity Conservation. Not just stuff to mine.
- Camels and Climate Resilience: Adaptation in Northern Kenya. Increasing focus on camel herding a reasonable climate resilience strategy, but only under some scenarios, for some communities. And what is it doing to diversity?
- A review of factors that influence the production of quality seed for long-term conservation in genebanks. What’s best for commercial seed production is not necessarily best for long-term conservation. Though it won’t hurt.
- The eco-evolutionary impacts of domestication and agricultural practices on wild species. Agriculture (plant breeding, agricultural practices and gene flow with crops) can have evolutionary consequences for wild species that undermine the success of agriculture.
- Multiple alleles at a single locus control seed dormancy in Swedish Arabidopsis. Careful with that GWAS!
Brainfood: African sorghum, Dying living collections, Safe oats, Faba relative, Monitoring erosion, Driving livestock diversity, Sweet cryo, Wild rice genomes, Indian foxtails, Bonsai cassava, Sahelian food trees
- Assessment of genetic diversity of sorghum [Sorghum bicolor (l.) Moench] germplasm in East and Central Africa. Each country is different.
- A Review of Living Collections with Special Emphasis on Sustainability and Its Impact on Research Across Multiple Disciplines. Crop genebanks are just the tip of the iceberg, but they all have the same problems.
- Why Oats Are Safe and Healthy for Celiac Disease Patients. Because of the avenins.
- 14,000-year-old seeds indicate the Levantine origin of the lost progenitor of faba bean. Eureka!
- Monitoring Changes in Genetic Diversity. Needs genetic data.
- An exploratory analysis on how geographic, socioeconomic, and environmental drivers affect the diversity of livestock breeds worldwide. More animals = more breeds.
- Cryopreservation and evaluations of vegetative growth, microtuber production and genetic stability in regenerants of purple-fleshed potato. Apparently the first time it was done for this colour of sweet potatoes.
- Sequencing of Australian wild rice genomes reveals ancestral relationships with domesticated rice. N. Australia is the centre of diversity of genome A.
- Genetic diversity and variability in Foxtail millet [Setaria italica (L.)] germplasm based on morphological traits. 51 Indian elites form non-geographic groups.
- The Bonsai as an alternative safety duplication system of the world cassava collection preserved at CIAT. So cool.
- Conservation of food tree species in Niger: towards a participatory approach in rural communities. Adansonia, Boscia and Maerua need watching.