Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

April 19, 2022April 25, 2022

The Guardian on the guardians of agrobiodiversity

There’s a big series on agricultural biodiversity unfolding in The Guardian. So far we’ve had the following:

Our food system isn’t ready for the climate crisis, including pithy quote from yours truly.
Seed banks: the last line of defense against a threatening global food crisis, including pithy quote from my boss.
‘We’re running out of time’: Dan Saladino on why the loss of diversity in our foods matters, including numerous pithy quotes from Dan.
Blue corn and melons: meet the seed keepers reviving ancient, resilient crops, including pithy quotes from Roxanne Swentzell and others.

I’m not sure how much more there is to come, but I hope it keeps going a while yet.

LATER: There was indeed more!

April 11, 2022April 7, 2022

Brainfood: Ultra-processed food, Micronutrients, Wheat breeding, Bambara groundnut breeding, Seed longevity, Sheep diversity, Switchgrass ploidy, Seed services, Jersey in Africa, Wine history, Austronesian dispersal

Ultra-processed foods should be central to global food systems dialogue and action on biodiversity. Should.
Global plant diversity as a reservoir of micronutrients for humanity. As.
Mainstreaming grain zinc and iron concentrations in CIMMYT wheat germplasm. Eventually.
Utilization of Plant Genetic Resources of Bambara Groundnut Conserved Ex Situ and Genetic Diversification of Its Primary Genepool for Semi-Arid Production. Insufficient.
More on seed longevity phenotyping. p₅₀.
Gender dynamics around introduction of improved forages in Kenya and Ethiopia. Training.
Whole-Genome Resequencing of Worldwide Wild and Domestic Sheep Elucidates Genetic Diversity, Introgression, and Agronomically Important Loci. Hairy.
Jersey cattle in Africa: From the Breed’s Documented Past to a Profit IndexLinked Future. Promising?
A generalist–specialist trade-off between switchgrass cytotypes impacts climate adaptation and geographic range. Polyploidy!
Decentralized Seed Services in Africa. Quality.
The Rise of Wine among Ancient Civilizations across the Mediterranean Basin. Ritual.
Genome Analysis Traces Regional Dispersal of Rice in Taiwan and Southeast Asia. Ok, I give up, I can’t do this. Austronesian speakers did not spread out of Taiwan because of rice. If you can summarize that in a word, I’m impressed, so let me know.

April 4, 2022April 4, 2022

Brainfood: Digitizing collections, Bean core, Livestock diversity, Maya & maize, Fish stocks & CC, Save the weed, Flax CWR, Italian agrobiodiversity

Cross-validation of a semantic segmentation network for natural history collection specimens. Computers can distinguish the herbarium label from the actual specimen and other stuff on the sheet, helping with the whole automatic digitization thing, but it takes some really fancy math.
The landscapes of livestock diversity: grazing local breeds as a proxy for domesticated species adaptation to the environment. Medium fancy math used to map breed diversity in the Iberian Peninsula for different livestock species and relate it to environmental factors.
South-to-north migration preceded the advent of intensive farming in the Maya region. Sort of like tomato, but in the other direction. Plenty of math involved, but behind the scenes, thankfully.
Timing and magnitude of climate-driven range shifts in transboundary fish stocks challenge their management. Huge amount of data and very fancy math shows fish are in trouble.
A Core Set of Snap Bean Genotypes Established by Phenotyping a Large Panel Collected in Europe. Ok, even I can follow the math on this one.
Assessment of biogeographic variation in traits of Lewis flax (Linum lewisii) for use in restoration and agriculture. Very approachable math shows which populations of a CWR can best be used for restoration, and where; and also for domestication and breeding.
An updated checklist of plant agrobiodiversity of northern Italy. Very useful use of very basic maths. Key number: only 43% of the PGR on the list are conserved ex situ.
Cannabis, the multibillion dollar plant that no genebank wanted. No math needed to figure out weed needs a genebank.

April 1, 2022

An apple story a day…

Well, that’s odd. The rush of stories about apples usually happens in the autumn. And yet, just in the past couple of days, quite apart from the tweet about Korbinian Aigner, I have come across:

An excellent roundup from the Apples & People newsletter.
A pointer to a webpage on the history of American apples.
News of newly-bred hypoallergenic varieties.

Oh, and since I have you here, might as well also say that there’s been an update from GRIN-U. No new resources specifically on apples lately, but there’s been a few in the past.

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?