- Catastrophic Declines in Wilderness Areas Undermine Global Environment Targets. 10% of supposedly remote wilderness areas gone since the early 1990s.
- Genetic diversity trend in Indian rice varieties: an analysis using SSR markers. The diversity of rice varieties released in India has been decreasing, but only of late.
- Genotypic and phenotypic changes in wild barley (Hordeum vulgare subsp. spontaneum) during a period of climate change in Jordan. There were changes in climate on one side and phenotype and genotype on the other, but it was difficult to find a connection between the two.
- EST-SSR Based Genetic Diversity and Population Structure among Korean Landraces of Foxtail Millet (Setaria italica L.). As is often the case, there’s no geographic structure, unless there is.
- Domestication of jute mallow (Corchorus olitorius L.): ethnobotany, production constraints and phenomics of local cultivars in Ghana. Let the breeding begin.
- Similar estimates of temperature impacts on global wheat yield by three independent methods. Down by about 5% for a 1°C global temperature increase, no matter how you slice it.
- Genome-wide association mapping of provitamin A carotenoid content in cassava. SNPs associated with carotenoid content in cassava roots found in vicinity of known gene responsible for increase in accumulation of provitamin A carotenoids in cassava roots.
Strategizing about forages
My latest over at the work blog is about forages, their genebanks, and my mother-in-law.
Cows get a lot of bad press these days. They are blamed for climate change and deforestation and even unhealthy diets, as if it’s their fault that people like to scoff down cheeseburgers. In fact, the widely repeated assertion that “animal agriculture and eating meat are the biggest causes of global warming” is nothing but a myth. Livestock production is a significant contributor to carbon emissions, to be sure, but the real problem is how the production is done in rich countries. For a billion mostly poor farmers in developing countries, cattle and other livestock are not a problem: they’re a solution.
Brainfood: Eurisco, Saline barley, ICRISAT sorghum, Hardy kiwi, Pepper diversity, Pakistani dates, W Africa & climate change
- EURISCO: The European search catalogue for plant genetic resources. 43 countries, 400 institutes, 1.8 million accessions, and a vital part of Genesys!
- Yield-related salinity tolerance traits identified in a nested association mapping (NAM) population of wild barley. Salinity allele found in wild barley.
- Geographical distribution of traits and diversity in the world collection of pearl millet [Pennisetum glaucum (L.) R. Br., synonym: Cenchrus americanus (L.) Morrone] landraces conserved at the ICRISAT genebank. Plant height in Burkina Faso ranges from 80 to 490cm.
- Hardy Kiwifruit Genetic Resources. They’re wild.
- Deciphering Genetic Diversity in the Origins of Pepper (Capsicum spp.) and Comparison with Worldwide Variability. Diversity is decreasing in Ecuador.
- Simple Sequence Repeat (SSR) markers show greater similarity among morphologically diverse Date palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.) cultivars grown in Pakistan. Morphologically diverse varieties show little genetic diversity.
- Assessing climate adaptation options and uncertainties for cereal systems in West Africa. About the only thing that’s going to work is increased temperature resilience during flowering.
Dissecting pearl millet diversity
Our friends at ICRISAT have been busy describing their pearl millet collection, and their latest offering is a thorough analysis of the geographic distribution of morphological traits. That follows, among other things, a general review of the collection, and an analysis of latitudinal patterns in morphological diversity.
That last paper showed that although pearl millet landraces reach basically similar latitudes in both the N and S hemispheres (about 34°), there is much more cultivation north of the equator than south, as one would perhaps expect from the relative distribution of landmasses, except perhaps for the 15°–20° range, from which there is more cultivation south of the equator than north. Mid-latitude regions (15°–20°) in both hemispheres have proved the most useful as sources of material for developing high-yielding cultivars (they are early-maturing, producing long and thick panicles with large seeds). So it seems that southern hemisphere germplasm has a greater chance of being useful in breeding, although most cultivation is in the north. Another example of interdependence.
The latest paper 1 goes in a lot more detail for individual traits. It’s very difficult to summarize patterns in 8 quantitative traits (days to 50% flowering, plant height, total and productive tillers per plant, panicle exsertion, length and thickness and 1000 seed weight) and 8 qualitative traits (panicle shape and density, bristle length, seed shape and color, endosperm texture, green fodder yield potential and seed yield potential) from 15,969 accessions from 30 countries. So I’ll limit myself to one recommendation. If you want to see huge variation in pearl millet height, go to Burkina Faso.
Reports galore
It’s clearly the season for major reports. Hot on the heels of AGRA’s status report on African agriculture, and IFPRI’s look at agricultural reasearch in Africa, both of which we Nibbled recently, there’s an IDS-Oxfam study into the effects of the global food crisis and, from the Global Alliance for the Future of Food, the aptly named The Future of Food: Seeds of Resilience, A Compendium of Perspectives on Agricultural Agrobiodiversity from Around the World. I hope someone is joining up the dots.