- Nutritional profiling and GIS-based grid mapping of Job’s tears (Coix lacryma-jobi L.) germplasm. 2 genebank accessions out of 32 are especially good.
- Diversity and Adaptation of Currently Grown Wheat Landraces and Modern Germplasm in Afghanistan, Iran, and Turkey. Some wheat landraces were just as productive as modern varieties, so crossing landraces with other landraces could be a good breeding strategy. Maybe even for Job’s tears.
- Mining of the national gene bank collection identifies resistance sources for loose smut of wheat in Northern Himalayan conditions. 58 of 586 were resistant. Let the inter-landrace crossing begin!
- Are Traditional Lima Bean (Phaseolus lunatus L.) Landraces Valuable to Cope with Climate Change? Effects of Drought on Growth and Biochemical Stress Markers. Oh no, the commercial variety is more drought-resistant than the, ahem, two landraces.
- Low-cost, handheld near-infrared spectroscopy for root dry matter content prediction in cassava. A faster and cheaper way of figuring out which cassavas are better than others.
- Mutations in DNA polymerase δ subunit 1 co-segregate with CMD2-type resistance to Cassava Mosaic Geminiviruses. Now for a faster and cheaper way of spotting the gene in your crosses.
- Phenotypic Variation and the Impact of Admixture in the Oryza rufipogon Species Complex (ORSC). Sometimes there’s no short-cut to the slog of detailed phenotyping if you want a short-cut to pre-breeding.
- Evaluation of black gram varieties using crowd source citizen science under northern hilly climatic condition of Chhattisgarh. Let the farmers do the slog of phenotyping.
- A view of the pan-genome of domesticated cowpea (Vigna unguiculata [L.] Walp.). The genes not shared by all six sub-populations of the cultivated cowpea are very important to the overall diversity of the crop. Let scientists do the slog of genotyping.
- Breeding for disease resistance in soybean: a global perspective. 800 resistance loci/alleles for 28 varied diseases from all over the world. Imagine one variety with all of them :)
- Genetic diversity in early maturity Chinese and European elite soybeans: A comparative analysis. Two equally diverse but distinct genepools. Unclear how the above 800 loci divide up.
- Association mapping across a multitude of traits collected in diverse environments in maize. More slogging through phenotyping, this time to uncover pleiotropy.
- Incorporating male sterility increases hybrid maize yield in low input African farming systems. But I guess you need the above to decide on the parents for your fancy hybrids.
- Pedigree reconstruction for triploid apple cultivars using single nucleotide polymorphism array data. Triploids apples may be bigger and stronger, but they’re also genetic dead ends.
- Evidence of an additional center of apple domestication in Iran, with contributions from the Caucasian crab apple Malus orientalis Uglitzk. to the cultivated apple gene pool. Another example of multiple domestication “events”.
So are soybeans sorted or not?
Readers may have seen press coverage of a paper in Science suggesting that a biotech tweak to photosynthesis has led to significant yield boosts in soybeans. The tweak involves getting leaves to respond more nimbly to changes in light intensity, including due to shading by other leaves. It has successfully increased biomass production in tobacco in the past: would it also increase seed yield in a food crop under field conditions?
Yes, by up to a third, said the headlines. Not so fast, said Merritt Khaipho-Burch on Twitter: we’re going to need many more and much better field trials before we’re convinced.
That got some push-back, basically saying those kinds of trials are too expensive to be a precondition of publication. But now one of the authors of the original study, Steven Burgess, has weighed in, also on Twitter, saying the criticism is valid, it’s all very complicated, and the paper is just a proof of principle at this stage.
Now to get the press to explain all that.
Brainfood: Canadian berries, Durian, Watermelon domestication, Wild cacao, New Chinese fruit, Animal pollinators, Food impacts
- Berries as a case study for crop wild relative conservation, use, and public engagement in Canada. Berries could be an agrobiodiversity conservation flagship, at least in Canada. If only other types of crops, and countries, were that easy.
- The king of fruits. There’s a dark side to durian that’s thankfully not there with berries.
- Genome sequencing of up to 6,000-yr-old Citrullus seeds reveals use of a bitter-fleshed species prior to watermelon domestication. Neolithic Libyans used wild watermelons for their seeds, not flesh.
- Comparison of bioactive components and flavor volatiles of diverse cocoa genotypes of Theobroma grandiflorum, Theobroma bicolor, Theobroma subincanum and Theobroma cacao. Could use the wild relatives for tastier chocolate. Another potential flagship, surely.
- Akebia: A Potential New Fruit Crop in China. I’d totally try it. And not just because it’s called both “wild banana” and “chocolate vine.”
- Animal pollination increases stability of crop yield across spatial scales. Not just higher yields, greater yield stability too. Important for some of the above, and many other fruits.
- Estimating the environmental impacts of 57,000 food products. More nutritious foods tend to be more environmentally friendly too. But how many of these products include the above? I mean fruits, not pollinators.
Brainfood: Sweet potato in Polynesia, Land use in Jamaica, Himalayan Neolithic, Early modern Spanish ag, E Asian Neolithic double
- Sweet Potato on Rapa Nui: Insights from a Monographic Study of the Genus Ipomoea. Seeds could just maybe have got there by floating, but more likely sweet potato was introduced to Easter Island by people from other parts of Polynesia, perhaps not by the first arrivals though.
- The legacy of 1300 years of land use in Jamaica. European colonization led to deforestation. And no doubt the spread of sweet potato, but that’s another story. The constant is cassava.
- Prehistoric agricultural decision making in the western Himalayas: ecological and social variables. Large, socially diverse prehistoric sites had more diverse agriculture. At these high altitude anyway. The constant is barley.
- Early Austronesians Cultivated Rice and Millet Together: Tracing Taiwan’s First Neolithic Crops. That would be japonica rice and foxtail millet, which were brought to Taiwan from the SE coast of China.
- Millet, Rice, and Isolation: Origins and Persistence of the World’s Most Enduring Mega-State. Meanwhile, back in China, the adoption of agriculture drives state formation.
- A 16th-century biodiversity and crop inventory. 60 crop and livestock species, which doesn’t sound like enough. Alas, no sweet potato or rice, but some Setaria millet.
Brainfood: Convivial conservation, Resilient forests, Traditional industries, Wheat supplies, Food system transformation, Micronutrient security, Biotech promise, Ultra-processed food impacts, Sub-Saharan agriculture, Farmer risk management, Afro-Brazilian agriculture, Biodiversity funding
- Exploring Convivial Conservation in Theory and Practice: Possibilities and Challenges for a Transformative Approach to Biodiversity Conservation. Conservation should be integrative, democratic and redistributive. Hard row to hoe.
- Emerging signals of declining forest resilience under climate change. Convivially or not, better conserve forests quickly.
- Adapting traditional industries to national park management: A conceptual framework and insights from two Chinese cases. Integrative and redistributive, but I’m not sure how democratic.
- Near- to long-term measures to stabilize global wheat supplies and food security. There’s a bunch of stuff that we can do in the short term, but in the end we’re going to need diverse, gender-equitable agro-ecosystems which are properly supported by investment in research. Sort of integrative, democratic and redistributive then, perhaps?
- From food price crisis to an equitable food system. Looks like the food system needs to be as convivial as conservation. If not more so.
- Trade and dietary preferences can determine micronutrient security in the United Kingdom. Going to be difficult to take back control of micronutrient security.
- Turning promise into practice: Crop biotechnology for increasing genetic diversity and climate resilience. Maybe biotech needs to be more convivial too.
- A conceptual framework for understanding the environmental impacts of ultra-processed foods and implications for sustainable food systems. Nothing convivial about ultra-processed foods, alas.
- Why food insecurity persists in sub-Saharan Africa: A review of existing evidence. Exports, basically. Looks like exports are really not very convivial.
- Crops in crises: Shocks shape smallholders’ diversification in rural Ethiopia. Farmers need continual access to both the informal and formal seed systems to mitigate risk, but poor farmers need more money to do so. Maybe link them up to export markets? No, wait…
- Traditional Agriculture and Food Sovereignty: Quilombola Knowledge and Management of Food Crops. Lots of conviviality, but not enough to fully mitigate risk.
- The role of international cooperative initiatives in financing biodiversity. Partnerships between state and a variety of non-state actors may just be an opportunity for more convivial conservation and food systems. But then I would say that.