Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

November 18, 2014

Global Nutrition Report calls for better integration with agriculture sector

The share of nutrition-sensitive investments in agriculture, social protection, water, sanitation and hygiene, education, and women’s empowerment programs needs to expand. The success of these sectors is important for nutrition improvement but they could do much more for nutrition while furthering their own goals. From the available evidence, the authors suggest that nutrition-sensitive expenditures are currently a small percentage of expenditures in these sectors. Partly this is because nutrition allies in the different sectors may not know what to do to make their nutrition programs more nutrition sensitive or why it is in their interests to do so…

That’s from the synopsis of the just-released Global Nutrition Report, the first of its kind. Their point is perhaps illustrated by another just-released report, this one on diabetes. When you finally manage to click through to the bit on prevention, there’s very little on diet, let alone the role of the food system as a whole.

November 17, 2014November 18, 2014

Brainfood: Pea spectroscopy, Phaseolus diversity, More beans, Brazilian rice, Trees in landscapes, German cherries, Appalachian apples, Sicilian sheep, Diverse livestock systems, Barley seed longevity, African wild veggies

Using Fourier Transform Near-Infrared Spectroscopy For the Evaluation and Regional Analysis of Pea (Pisum sativum L.). Fancy maths reveals a low-protein content group, a high total polyphenol group and a high protein, starch and oil group in Chinese pea germplasm.
Total phenolics, flavonoids, tannins and antioxidant activity of lima beans conserved in a Brazilian Genebank. No fancy maths used to figure out that they vary among accessions, but not necessarily only due to genetics. Actually, that goes for the previous one too.
Potencial de uso de cultivares crioulas de feijoeiro no sistema de cultivo orgânico. Bean landraces do no worse than cultivars under organic conditions in Brazil.
Evaluation of rice genotypes for sugarcane borer resistance using phenotypic methods and molecular markers. Resistant materials (a couple out of 34 tested) are genetically similar, and will now be used as parents in Brazilian improvement programme. No word on whether the results will be any good under organic conditions.
Functional and phylogenetic diversity of scattered trees in an agricultural landscape: Implications for conservation. Brazil again. Scattered trees may not look as nice as closed forest, but they represent decent proportions of both its functional and taxonomic diversity.
Physicochemical characterization of fruit quality traits in a German sour cherry collection. Some accessions are not only better, but more consistent, than commercial varieties. No word on to what extent they can be found scattered across the German countryside.
Climate Change and Apple Diversity: Local Perceptions from Appalachian North Carolina. Heirloom apple growers are largely climate change deniers. That doesn’t make their orchards (no scattered trees for them) any less cool.
Genome wide linkage disequilibrium and genetic structure in Sicilian dairy sheep breeds. Valle del Belice, Comisana and Pinzirita dairy sheep breeds are variable, though some more than others, yet they don’t overlap.
Agricultural diversity to increase adaptive capacity and reduce vulnerability of livestock systems against weather variability – A farm-scale simulation study. Fancy maths show that more diverse livestock systems are better for ya. In France anyway. And that diversity doesn’t seem to include livestock diversity.
Genome-wide association mapping and biochemical markers reveal that seed ageing and longevity are intricately affected by genetic background, developmental and environmental conditions in barley. Title pretty much says it all.
Dietary contribution of Wild Edible Plants to women’s diets in the buffer zone around the Lama forest, Benin — an underutilized potential. Important sources of Cu and Fe, but even so not enough.

November 16, 2014

Maize field day in Mexico

Dr Denise Costich, head of the CIMMYT maize genebank (MGB) sent out a very compelling invitation a couple of days back:

Attached is the official invitation to our field day, to be held next Friday, 21 November, starting at 10:00 AM at the Toluca Station (please note the change of date). We are showcasing our beautiful materials from the high altitude Andean germplasm that, up to now, the MGB has had great difficulties in regenerating here in Mexico. We also included a demonstration plot in our nursery, featuring long forgotten genetic pools developed at the Toluca Station in the 80s and 90s, as well as, popcorns, cacahuacintles, and other landraces from the region. We are targeting the smallholder farmers from areas around 2600 masl and above. We couldn’t have done this without funding from the Global Crop Diversity Trust and ICAMEX. We also thank the Toluca Station Manager, Fernando Delgado, for his great support, interest, and encouragement. Thanks also to Hans Braun, who extended an invitation to the “maiceros” of CIMMYT to plant at this wonderful station… I’m sure I have missed people who might be interested in attending the field day. You are welcome to forward this invitation to them. However, everyone, please RSVP, so that we have enough food and catalogs!

It sounds like great fun, and I wish I could go, but I can’t. Maybe you can?

November 10, 2014November 5, 2014

Brainfood: Basil resistance, Maize quality & drought, Benin sorghum, Swedish farm size, E European grapevives, Lebanese olives, Brazilian sheep, Sudanese cattle, Egyptian bean rhizobia, Barley origins, Intercropping

Selecting basil genotypes with resistance against downy mildew. Only the exotic basils were any good. I will resist the temptation to make Fawlty Towers jokes.
High grain quality accessions within a maize drought tolerant core collection. Not so much a core collection, rather a set of local and exotic drought-tolerant varieties put together in the former Yugoslavia. Some of which turn out to have decent quality too.
Diversity, genetic erosion and farmer’s preference of sorghum varieties [Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench] in North-Eastern Benin. Climate change, poor soils and striga are the main problems, according to farmers, and none of their current varieties will help much, apparently, which is why they are disappearing.
Effects of Farm Size and On-Farm Landscape Heterogeneity on Biodiversity—Case-Study of Twelve Farms in a Swedish Landscape. Small farms = heterogeneous farms = biodiversity-rich farms.
Identification and characterization of grapevine genetic resources maintained in Eastern European colletions. SSR revealed that of 1098 mainly Vitis vinifera accessions, 997 were indigenous to E. Europe, 101 were Western European cultivars, hybrids, rootstocks and new crosses; the 997 accessions were actually 658 unique cultivars, 54% of which were maintained in the countries of origin only.
Extent of the genetic diversity in Lebanese olive (Olea europaea L.) trees: a mixture of an ancient germplasm with recently introduced varieties. Three genetic groups around the Mediterranean, most Lebanese material typical of the eastern group; monumental trees similar to Cypriot varieties. In other news, there’s a World Olive Germplasm Bank of Marrakech.
Application of microsatellite markers for breeding and genetic conservation of herds of Pantaneiro sheep. Evidence of inbreeding means a proper genetic management scheme needs to be designed and implemented.
Historical demographic profiles and genetic variation of the East African Butana and Kenana indigenous dairy zebu cattle. The only indigenous African dairy breeds, apparently, but with distinct genetic histories despite their similar distribution in Sudan and dairy use.
Phylogenetic multilocus sequence analysis of native rhizobia nodulating faba bean (Vicia faba L.) in Egypt. Three species, and evidence of horizontal gene movement among them.
Transcriptome profiling reveals mosaic genomic origins of modern cultivated barley. The Fertile Crescent and Tibet.
Improving intercropping: a synthesis of research in agronomy, plant physiology and ecology. You can breed for it. Among other things.

November 7, 2014

Featured: Millet in E Africa

Lieven Claessens resolves the Great Millet Mystery:

In GYGA we use HarvestChoice’s SPAM crop distribution masks for our analysis. SPAM in turn uses FAO statistics to create spatially disaggregated maps of crop distribution. I looked in more detail to the FAOstat numbers and found out that their numbers for ‘millet’ are actually for all sorts of millets combined… So finger and pearl millet are combined, even with teff to my big surprise! Identity crisis? ;-) In GYGA we have used a generic model for both pearl and finger millet so they are combined in the analysis….

Bottom line: the GYGA results for “millet” are unusable. But it’s FAO’s fault.