Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

December 3, 2015December 3, 2015

Genebank data everywhere

Those who follow such things will no doubt be as excited as we are about the fact that USDA’s National Plant Germplasm System has just switched over from its old workhorse documentation system, GRIN, to the young pretender, GRIN-Global. ¹ You can access all the passport, characterization and evaluation data USDA has on its 574,764 accessions from the GRIN-Global website. What the user sees on the public interface when searching for and ordering germplasm, though, is only a small part of the picture. All USDA genebank staff around the country are also using the Curator Tool to manage their collections and fulfil order requests. It’s been a massive undertaking. And the software is actually available to all. So if you’re a genebank curator and would like to experiment with the same documentation system that the mighty NPGS uses, check it out.

As it happens, we’ve also just come across a case of a user downloading some GRIN data and serving it up on its own. The good folks at Widespread Malus have extracted all the Malus sieversii data and stuck them in an Excel spreadsheet, to make things even easier for wild apple enthusiasts. Nice idea.

December 1, 2015November 30, 2015

Model livestock information systems

Attentive readers will know I occasionally take swipes at the state of genetic resources information systems, both in the crops and domestic livestock areas. But as far as the latter is concerned it’s getting more and more difficult to do so, a twinge of jealousy being the more usual reaction. Take for example the fact that you can now download the results of distribution modelling, under various climate change scenarios, for 8800 livestock breeds, as recorded in the Domestic Animal Diversity Information system (DAD-IS). Here they are for Vietnam’s Ga Dong Tao chicken. Light green is the area currently suitable, red is the area suitable in 2050, dark green is the area suitable under both current and future conditions. The grey polygon is the reported distribution of the breed.

dadis_map

I suspect it will be some time before we’re able to do something similar for crops.

November 30, 2015November 30, 2015

Brainfood: Honeybee miscegenation, Cowpea shoots & leaves, Iberian goats, CIP fingerprinting, Seed networks, Early rice, Date palm genome, Pollinator services, Bananapocalypse

Population structure of honey bees in the Carpathian Basin (Hungary) confirms introgression from surrounding subspecies. The Hungarian honeybee is holding its own. For now.
Genetic Variability and Heritability Estimates of Nutritional Composition in the Leaves of Selected Cowpea Genotypes [Vigna unguiculata (L.) Walp.]. Something else you can breed for.
The Southwestern fringe of Europe as an important reservoir of caprine biodiversity. Local goat breeds in Spain and Portugal have few numbers, but much diversity, though in general weakly structured.
Are you getting what you ordered from your genebank? Fingerprinting of the clonal potato and sweetpotato collections at the International Potato Center. Ahem. Maybe not.
Seed exchange networks and food system resilience in the United States. Let my seeds go!
Barnyard grasses were processed with rice around 10000 years ago. Rice had to fight it out with other wetland grasses to get domesticated.
Whole genome re-sequencing of date palms yields insights into diversification of a fruit tree crop. Independent history in North Africa and the Middle East, but unclear if because of separate domestications or migration westward and introgression with local wild populations. Fruit colour genes the same as in oil palm.
Pollinator conservation — The difference between managing for pollination services and preserving pollinator diversity. The point is that there’s a difference.
Worse Comes to Worst: Bananas and Panama Disease—When Plant and Pathogen Clones Meet. TR4 is a single clone.

November 27, 2015

A sweet pea for charity

Thrive, the charity operating in the field of disability and gardening, has been named Thompson & Morgan’s Charity of the Year.

To start the partnership, a new sweet pea has been launched for 2016, with money generated from sales going towards Thrive training programs at the charity’s four regional centres and local community venues. The sale of the sweet pea aims to generate £10,000+. Alongside this Thompson & Morgan is also supplying £1,000 of flower and vegetable seeds to be grown at the charity’s three garden project sites at Gateshead, Reading and London’s Battersea Park, plus 2,400 litres of incredicompost and also incredibloom fertiliser for use in the planting displays.

What a great idea. And a beautiful crop wild relative too.

November 26, 2015November 26, 2015

A newsletter to conjure with

Well, I thought we had our finger on the agricultural biodiversity pulse, but this is a new one on us:

Agrobiodiversity@knowledged is a joint Hivos and Oxfam Novib Knowledge Programme initiated in 2011. This three-year Knowledge Programme aims to break through the barriers that limit the scaling up, institutional embedding and horizontal extension of practices that build on agricultural biodiversity for improved livelihoods and resilient food systems. At the heart of the programme is a global knowledge and experience community of organizations working on agricultural biodiversity with millions of farmers worldwide, where evidence and insights are generated, shared and tested. The knowledge programme aims to synthesize knowledge from a local to a global scale, conduct research on approaches and analytical frameworks that provide new perspectives on agricultural biodiversity and its role in resilient socio-ecological food systems, and improve horizontal and vertical knowledge flows towards positive change and transformation.

There’s a useful-looking newsletter too, though I’m blowed if I can work out how to subscribe to it.