Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

January 7, 2014January 10, 2014

Online apple breeding

Luigi noticed an interesting proposal to set up an online apple-breeding programme. Sean Myles, Canada Research Chair in Agricultural Genetic Diversity at Dalhousie University, Halifax, says that government and industry are getting out of apple breeding because traditional methods are “too expensive and risky”. So he wants to pull together an alternative. The idea isn’t fully fleshed out yet, and that’s the point, because this is just one idea that will be pitched during a “48 hour idea lab” to refresh the food scene in the Annapolis valley in Nova Scotia, Canada.

It takes place in 10 days time — 17-19 January — and sounds very cool indeed. Given the preponderance of new media types who will be attending, I’m sure there will be no shortage of online reporting. But if anyone there wants to do us a write up, that would be welcome.

As welcome as a decent downloadable apple.

January 7, 2014

While we were gone …

… there was a long discussion of some important minutiae concerning the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, all occasioned by a little footnote in a learned paper. The footnote sought to “point out the tensions involved” in “motivations for distributing multilateral system PGRFA to non-ITPGRFA members”.

Lovers of alphabet soup will find much there to feast on, as will historians of the Treaty and its antecedents. Thanks to all who contributed. A nagging counterfactual remains: would there have been that much discussion had the footnote been incorporated in the body of the paper? I guess we’ll never know.

January 6, 2014December 4, 2013

Brainfood: Tea flower transcriptomics, Ag origins, Hunan rice, ITPGRFA & CBD, Mycorrhiza, Sugar beet breeding, Agronomy, Molecular domestication, Cactus domestication, Rice yield gene

Floral Transcriptome Sequencing for SSR Marker Development and Linkage Map Construction in the Tea Plant (Camellia sinensis). Neat, to be sure, but not entirely clear why the transcriptome of a part of a crop that is not economically exploited should be of more than academic use to anyone. But no doubt someone will set us right on this.
Emergence of Agriculture in the Foothills of the Zagros Mountains of Iran. Eastern Fertile Crescent just as important as western.
Analysis of main agronomic characteristics and utilization status of rice resources in Hunan Province. Hunan has a provincial genebank with more than 12,000 accession, “repetition eliminated.”
The comparison of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture and the Nagoya Protocol. Like the above, this is in Chinese, except for the abstract, which recommends ratification of both relevant instruments. I hope someone is listening.
Biodiversity of Arbuscular Mycorrhizal fungi in Agricultural crops of western Himalayas. Everybody’s at it. Well, almost.
Assessment of breeding progress in sugar beet by testing old and new varieties under greenhouse and field conditions. It has been steady and is set to continue. At least in Germany.
Why crop yields in developing countries have not kept pace with advances in agronomy. Let them eat German sugar beets. But seriously: agronomist says it’s about the agronomy.
Molecular mechanisms involved in convergent crop domestication. It’s mutations at orthologous loci, and it can be copied.
Differential survival and growth of wild and cultivated seedlings of columnar cacti: Consequences of domestication. Gotta wonder if mutations at orthologous loci were involved.
NAL1 allele from a rice landrace greatly increases yield in modern indica cultivars. But it came from a tropical japonica landrace from Indonesia, and works its magic via pleiotropic effect on plant architecture.

December 30, 2013January 9, 2014

Brainfood: Chinese heritage sites, Chinese farmer coops, Seasonal foods, Agroforestry markets, Quinoa roadmap, Swedish pseudo-coffee, Barley phylogenetics, Switchgrass diversity, Italian maize composition, European forest vulnerability

Conserving agricultural heritage systems through tourism: Exploration of two mountainous communities in China. Hopes of benefits are high. And will no doubt be cruelly dashed. What all this means for crop diversity is anyone’s guess.
Farmer cooperatives in China: diverse pathways to sustainable rural development. Hopes of benefits are high. And will no doubt be cruelly dashed. What all this means for crop diversity is anyone’s guess.
Seasonality and dietary requirements: will eating seasonal food contribute to health and environmental sustainability? Maybe, but other things are more important.
Collective action to improve market access for smallholder producers of agroforestry products: key lessons learned with insights from Cameroon’s experience. It can work, and it helps if there is fun to be had.
Quinoa biodiversity and sustainability for food security under climate change. A review. We’re going to have to move beyond Quinoa Real. Here comes the model.
Swedish coffee (Astragalus boeticus L.), a neglected coffee substitute with a past and a potential future. It could be revived, and here’s how, but why would anyone want to?
Phylogeny of ten species of the genus Hordeum L. as revealed by AFLP markers and seed storage protein electrophoresis. Breaks down into Old and New World species.
Genetic Structure of Remnant Populations and Cultivars of Switchgrass (Panicum virgatum) in the Context of Prairie Conservation and Restoration. Have to be careful using cultivars in the restoration of natural populations. Not because they are lower in diversity than natural populations, but because they are different.
Carotenoids, Phenolic Compounds and Antioxidant Capacity of Five Local Italian Corn (Zea Mays L.). Kernels. Roccacontrada Rosso could be marketed as a functional food. But you lost me at that capital M.
Vulnerability of dynamic genetic conservation units of forest trees in Europe to climate change. By 2100, about half of the species in the conservation units will be at the edge of or outside their climate niche.

December 23, 2013December 2, 2013

Brainfood: Yam age, Cacao conservation, Eucarpia consultation report, Wheat sequencing, Pesticides & earthworms, Abandoned farmland & conservation, Agroforestry, New Guinea agriculture, Soybean cores, Bean taste

Clonal diversity and estimation of relative clone age: application to agrobiodiversity of yam (Dioscorea rotundata). Some clones are almost two thousand years old.
Development of a cost-effective diversity-maximising decision-support tool for in situ crop genetic resources conservation. The case of cacao. Sure, you can use molecular markers and fancy maths, but in the end you’ll still need to make some judgement calls.
Fishing in the gene pool — how useful was the catch? We have the technology. Do we have the policies?
The Wheat Black Jack: Advances Towards Sequencing the 21 Chromosomes of Bread Wheat. See what I mean about the technologies?
Reduction of pesticide use can increase earthworm populations in wheat crops in a European temperate region. Prince Charles will be pleased.
Areas of Increasing Agricultural Abandonment Overlap the Distribution of Previously Common, Currently Threatened Plant Species. In Japan, abandoned farmland can be good and bad for threatened species. Damn scientists. Never a straight answer.
Can agroforestry option values improve the functioning of drivers of agricultural intensification in Africa? Yes. But please, sir, what’s option value?
Biodiversity through Domestication. Examples from New Guinea. What 8000 years of horticulture will do to diversity. I wonder if some yam clones go back that long.
Establishment of the integrated applied core collection and its comparison with mini core collection in soybean (Glycine max). You lost me at integrated.
Variability in sensory attributes in common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.): a first survey in the Iberian secondary diversity center. Agronomy does not correlate with taste. So you can breed for both.