Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

March 30, 2022March 31, 2022

A remarkable pomologist

There was a fascinating tweet yesterday from Trevor & Frances FitzJohn, cider makers in Wairarapa, New Zealand.

One of the most courageous pomologists was Bavarian priest Korbinian Aigner. He was outspoken during WW2 and sent to Dachau concentration camp where he secret continued his apple breeding.

— TeePee Cider (@Trevor_FJ) March 29, 2022

It’s about the Bavarian priest, pomologist and artist Korbinian Aigner. I’m sorry to say I’d never heard of him. He apparently continued his apple breeding efforts even while imprisoned at Dachau.

Between two barracks he planted apple trees, and he even succeeded in breeding new varieties which he named KZ-1, KZ-2, KZ-3 and KZ-4, though by 2016 only KZ-3 (later named the Kobinian Apple in his honor) was still in existence. The saplings were smuggled out of the camp by a young novice nun, who visited the plantations in order to collect fruit and vegetables for a local orphanage.

Alas, I can’t find his KZ-3 variety in any of the usual genebank databases. Has anyone out there come across it?

March 28, 2022March 22, 2022

Brainfood: NPGS use, Descriptor clustering, Fast phenotyping, Flax duplicates, Photosynthesis variation, Brassica breeding, Robusta & CC, Seaweed domestication, Fighting fish domestication, Hotspots & diets, Cotton & wildlife

Developing country demand for crop germplasm conserved by the U.S. National Plant Germplasm System. 5 years, 10 crops, 100,000 samples.
cacGMS: An Algorithm Cluster Germplasm based on Categorical Genetic Traits. Build a better cluster algorithm for categorical descriptors and the world will beat a path to your genebank. If it isn’t already.
Deep learning: as the new frontier in high-throughput plant phenotyping. A really fancy way of scoring those descriptors.
Selection of duplicates of flax accessions – an important task in the management of collection of genetic resources of Linum usitatissimum L. But you can do a lot with passport data.
Mining for allelic gold: finding genetic variation in photosynthetic traits in crops and wild relatives. Let the gene editing begin!
Expanding the genetic variation of Brassica juncea by introgression of the Brassica rapa genome. AABB gets a shot of AA.
Adaptive potential of Coffea canephora from Uganda in response to climate change. Some populations are going to do better than others under climate change. Ah, but are they the best populations for other traits?
Pre-domestication bottlenecks of the cultivated seaweed Gracilaria chilensis. Founder effect and over-exploitation mean that more diversity from New Zealand might be needed.
Genomic consequences of domestication of the Siamese fighting fish. You don’t need huge genetic diversity to get huge phenotypic diversity, even with strong selection. But will new diversity be needed eventually? From Siam?
Food versus wildlife: Will biodiversity hotspots benefit from healthier diets? Some hotspots will actually do worse if people eat better, so we will have to look at better agriculture too. Including seaweed, for all I know.
Commodity crops in biodiversity-rich production landscapes: Friends or foes? The example of cotton in the Mid Zambezi Valley, Zimbabwe. Possibly an example of the above. Cotton was better for wildlife than what came after prices dropped.

March 23, 2022March 23, 2022

New online training in plant genetic resources

An important announcement from Patrick F. Byrne, Professor Emeritus of Plant Breeding and Genetics at Colorado State University.

Three 1-credit graduate level courses will be available online from Colorado State University in Fall semester, 2022. The courses deal with the origins and structure of plant genetic diversity; the principles and methods for conserving that diversity; and strategies for using genetic resources in plant breeding. The courses, costs, and registration information are described at http://pgrcourse.colostate.edu/ and a flyer is attached to this message.
A number of new learning materials are available on the GRIN-U repository (https://grin-u.org/). These include videos on cowpea, sorghum, tomato, and potato; virtual tour videos of USDA’s National Laboratory for Genetic Resources Preservation; ebooks on crop wild relatives and a crop science virtual field tour; and infographics explaining USDA’s National Plant Germplasm System and the role of botanic gardens in conserving plant genetic resources. The videos are also available on the YouTube channel youtube.com/GRINUEducation. We hope these materials are useful to you in your teaching or outreach activities.
We are looking for success stories on the use of plant genetic resources for plant breeding or plant genetics research. If you have a story to tell, please consider filling out and submitting the attached template.

The materials described here were funded by a grant from the USDA-NIFA Higher Education Challenge Grant Program to Colorado State University, Iowa State University, and USDA-ARS.

March 21, 2022March 21, 2022

Brainfood: Green Revolution narratives, Soybean diversity, Wild barley diversity, Maize and bean breeding, Rice breeding, Apple pedigrees, Trees and diets, ICRISAT genebank, IITA genebank, GHUs, CGIAR policy, Diverse farming, De novo domestication

Epic narratives of the Green Revolution in Brazil, China, and India. Symbols, heroes, heritage-making and we-will-do-it-even-better-next-time in the service of self-preservation and self-assertion. But, as we shall see below, not everything needs to be an epic success to be interesting, and useful.
Using landscape genomics to infer genomic regions involved in environmental adaptation of soybean genebank accessions. Analysis of USDA collection shows that many haplotypes associated with high-latitude cold tolerance in China are still absent from modern American and European cultivars.
Phenotypic evolution of the wild progenitor of cultivated barley (Hordeum vulgare L. subsp. spontaneum (K. Koch) Thell.) across bioclimatic regions in Jordan. Re-collecting after 23 years shows some loss of phenotypic diversity.
Decades of Cultivar Development: A Reconciliation of Maize and Bean Breeding Projects and Their Impacts on Food, Nutrition Security, and Income of Smallholder Farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa. Much done, much remains to be done.
Genetic Trends Estimation in IRRIs Rice Drought Breeding Program and Identification of High Yielding Drought-Tolerant Lines. Progress, but not fast enough.
A new method to reconstruct the direction of parent-offspring duo relationships using SNP array data and its demonstration on ancient and modern cultivars in the outcrossing species Malus × domestica. Sometimes it’s difficult to tell which variety is the parent and which the offspring.
What are the links between tree-based farming and dietary quality for rural households? A review of emerging evidence in low- and middle-income countries. Meta-analysis shows that trees can help with diets, but it depends on a lot of things.
Genebanks and market participation: evidence from groundnut farmers in Malawi. Improved peanut varieties derived from genebank accessions encourage market participation by farmers through expanding the area under cultivation, but not the amount sold.
IITA’s genebank, cowpea diversity on farms, and farmers’ welfare in Nigeria. Improved varieties derived from genebank accessions don’t push out landrace diversity and are associated with higher yields and other benefits to farmers.
The role of CGIAR Germplasm Health Units in averting endemic crop diseases: the example of rice blast in Bangladesh. The IRRI Germplasm Health Unit contributed about 2% to the benefits of the rice blast resistance breeding programme, but that’s a cost:benefit ratio of 112.
Policy directions in public agricultural research: CGIAR’s public goods mandate and plant genetic resources. There has been too much focus on the “global” bit of “global public goods,” and opportunities have thus apparently been missed. The three papers above would like a word though.
Landscape complexity and functional groups moderate the effect of diversified farming on biodiversity: A global meta-analysis. Diverse farming systems are better for both agricultural production and biodiversity.
Breeding future crops to feed the world through de novo domestication. Ah yes, we will do it better this time.

March 17, 2022March 18, 2022

A new genebank for the ages is set for ages

Great news from the opening ceremony of the new Future Seeds genebank in Palmira, Colombia on 15 March:

The Bezos Earth Fund pledged US$17 million for Future Seeds, a new CGIAR genebank inaugurated today. The new genebank will bolster global efforts to safeguard the world’s future food supply.

This genebank is truly next-level:

Future Seeds is the most advanced facility in Latin America and is expected to become the first ever platinum-level LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design)-certified genebank building in the world. Its Data Discovery and Biotechnology Lab will use big-data technologies to mine the genebank using the latest in genetics to document the range of possibly useful traits in the current collection. Other breakthrough technologies across genebanks include drones and robotic rovers, which are helping analyze crop characteristics in the field more rapidly, and the use of artificial intelligence to enable collectors to identify potential biodiversity hotspots in nature.

Here, check it out for yourselves:

And here’s an overview of the collections from Genesys (beans in red, cassava blue, forages green).

Full disclosure: we also support the place at work.