Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog
Agrobiodiversity is crops, livestock, foodways, microbes, pollinators, wild relatives …
Will a plant germplasm accession conserved in a genebank change genetically over time? Sure, change is inevitable, but it can be minimized, and some can be accepted. Cocoyam (Xanthosoma sagittifolium (L.) Schott) genetic resources and breeding: a review of 50 years of research efforts. Conventional breeding, based on inducing flowering, is possible, but will require …
Global and local perspectives on food security and food systems. Six experts have their say on how to transform food systems, and dietary diversity seems to be a common (though not a universal) theme. Let’s dig a little deeper into that. Global estimation of dietary micronutrient inadequacies: a modelling analysis. A lot of people could …
Crop-to-wild gene flow in wild coffee species: the case of Coffea canephora in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. DNA bits diagnostic of domesticated coffee are finding their way into wild rainforest populations, but not all that much. The genome and population genomics of allopolyploid Coffea arabica reveal the diversification history of modern coffee cultivars. …
Landrace in situ (on-farm) conservation: European Union achievements. Lots of organizations and farmers are conserving landraces in Europe, in lots of ways, and pretty successfully, but the most sustainable way to do so would be to decrease barriers to their marketing, in particular in the context of organic agriculture. An assessment of the implementation of …
On the importance of diversity in ecological research. Diversity of the research teams, that is. This should apply to everything that follows. Adapting wild biodiversity conservation approaches to conserve agrobiodiversity. The main gap seem to be in the area of “payment for system services.” Agrobiodiversity could learn from biodiversity there. The Role of Crop, Livestock, …