The announcement of a fascinating new project on Kew’s tapa cloth collection from the Pacific is a great opportunity to remind myself about this wonderful specimen I encountered on Tonga a few years ago. Yes, everything is about me in the end.
Brainfood: Sesame diversity, Teff & drought, Semen bank, Forest genomic monitoring, Sahiwal cattle status, Genomic prediction, Ecuadorian homegardens, Spinach association mapping, ICRISAT pigeonpea & pearl millet, Women & milpa, African rice at AfricaRice, Bacteria helping wheat
- Analysis of Genetic Diversity and Population Structure of Sesame Accessions from Africa and Asia as Major Centers of Its Cultivation. Strong geographic structure, and more diversity in Asia than Africa.
- Performance of Tef [Eragrostis tef (Zucc.) Trotter] Genotypes for Yield and Yield Components Under Drought-Stressed and Non-Stressed Conditions. Out of 144 genotypes, 15 were good in ideal conditions, 8 under stress, and none, alas, in both cases.
- Genome resource banks pay conservation dividends. Banked semen from “genetically valuable” individuals used to slightly raise diversity in captive populations. Of black-footed ferrets.
- Conservation and Monitoring of Tree Genetic Resources in Temperate Forests. Theory.
- Logging by selective extraction of best trees: Does it change patterns of genetic diversity? The case of Nothofagus pumilio. Praxis: maybe.
- Population structure and demographic trends of the registered Sahiwal cattle in Kenya. It’s losing diversity, so Something Must Be Done.
- Genomic Prediction of Gene Bank Wheat Landraces. It’s not perfect, but not bad either.
- Plant diversity and ecosystem services in Amazonian homegardens of Ecuador. Ethnicity is the stongest determinant of floristic composition.
- Association mapping of leaf traits in spinach (Spinacia oleracea L.). “Five, seven and 14 SNPs were identified to be associated with surface texture, edge shape and petiole colour, respectively.”
- Pre-breeding to expand primary genepool through introgression of genes from wild Cajanus species for pigeonpea improvement. Even the tertiary genepool is interesting.
- Characterization and genetic potential of African pearl millet named landraces conserved at the ICRISAT genebank. 5 agronomic clusters, each with good stuff, but different good stuff.
- The participation of farm women in the milpa system of the Yucatán, Mexico. …is minimal.
- Screening African rice (Oryza glaberrima) for tolerance to abiotic stresses: I. Fe toxicity. 3 out of 2000!
- Alleviation of salt stress by halotolerant and halophilic plant growth-promoting bacteria in wheat (Triticum aestivum). Not by a huge amount. For one wheat variety. In hydroponics.
Another Pacific hibiscus to marvel at
More from our friend Lex Thomson on the Pacific Hibiscus saga:
Excited to report on the finding of a presumed new Hibiscus species in Solomon Islands. This Hibiscus has several distinctive features including round, saucer-shaped leaves with an entire or shallowly crenulated margin and very small, bright red flowers with a windmill arrangement of petals. The serrated dark red eye may indicate a relationship with the Fijian Hibiscus storckii but other features suggest affinities with Indian Ocean islands Hibiscus such as Hibiscus liliiflorus. The new species appears of ancient origins and may represent a ‘missing link’ between Pacific Islands and Mascarene Islands Hibiscus. Am looking forward to working with Solomon Islands botanist Myknee Sirikolo to describe this new species, which is thus far known only from a 1970’s collection from Santa Cruz Islands and the photographed plant in Mrs Bronwyn Lilo’s garden (Gosi Anikisina) near Honiara.
This from the Facebook page of Savurua Botanical Gardens in Fiji.
Lots more work to be done, clearly.
Brainfood: Lupine seeds, Bangladeshi rice, Biscay anchovy, Sweet cassava, Ancient vetches, Salty adzuki, Maroon crops, Mungbean cores, Cassava genome
- Evaluation of thermal, chemical, and mechanical seed scarification methods for 4 Great Basin lupine species. They all need different things.
- Exploring novel genetic sources of salinity tolerance in rice through molecular and physiological characterization. A lot of salt-tolerant Bangladeshi landraces cluster together in an aromatic group close to japonica.
- No loss of genetic diversity in the exploited and recently collapsed population of Bay of Biscay anchovy (Engraulis encrasicolus L.). Effective population size has remained steady, irrespective of census population size.
- Molecular characterization of accessions of a rare genetic resource: sugary cassava (Manihot esculenta Crantz) from Brazilian Amazon. Two distinct genetic groups.
- Presence of vetches (Vicia spp.) in agricultural and wild floras of ancient Europe. One of the proto-IndoEuropean roots for the collective name of these things translates as “avoid”.
- Salt tolerance in wild relatives of adzuki bean, Vigna angularis (Willd.) Ohwi et Ohashi. Two crossable wild relatives had different salt tolerance mechanisms.
- The ‘Botanical Gardens of the Dispossessed’ revisited: richness and significance of Old World crops grown by Suriname Maroons. Some crops are only used in rituals now. But even that’s pretty cool, and better than nothing.
- The AVRDC–The World Vegetable Center mungbean (Vigna radiata) core and mini core collections. 1481 (20% of total) accessions chosen by geography and phenotype, then 289 by SSRs.
- Sequencing wild and cultivated cassava and related species reveals extensive interspecific hybridization and genetic diversity. And you can also use the results for rubber!
Talking non-biotech coffee
I have said before that I would have a priori doubts about anything calling itself Talking Biotech. But I stand by what I also said in that post about the actual podcast of that name, by Dr Kevin Folta of the University of Florida, being largely free — though by no means entirely, alas — of the narrowness, nerdiness and preachyness that the name conjures up, at least for me. And so I congratulate Dr Folta on receiving a few days ago the Borlaug CAST Communications Award, given out annually by the Council for Agricultural Science and Technology (CAST). The recent episode on coffee, which we have have already Nibbled, is a pretty good introduction to his podcast, if you’re new to it. And I don’t say that just because I’m somewhat involved in the development of the coffee genetic resources conservation strategy mentioned therein.