Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

May 19, 2021May 21, 2021

The value of seeds

Douglas Gollin, Professor of Development Economics at the University of Oxford will speak about genebanks tomorrow, and you really mustn’t miss it. The talk’s title? “In Praise of Seed Morgues.” See what I mean?

LATER: The recording is on the GROW webpage. And here’s a spoiler…

May 17, 2021May 14, 2021

Brainfood: Wind, Strawberry breeding, Species concept, Apple domestication, Potato breeding, Organic cereals, Feed the Future, Kiribati diets, Mexican June, Armenia genebank, Maori kumara

Global wind patterns shape genetic differentiation, asymmetric gene flow, and genetic diversity in trees. The wind is blowing the answer, my friend.
Social network analysis of the genealogy of strawberry: retracing the wild roots of heirloom and modern cultivars. Some 1500 contributors to the current, quite diverse cultivated genepool, from numerous species.
Is Domestication Speciation? The Implications of a Messy Domestication model in the Holocene. They could have used the above as an additional example. But the answer to the question in the title seems to be that it doesn’t matter much, and I’m there for that.
Phenotypic divergence between the cultivated apple (Malus domestica) and its primary wild progenitor (Malus sieversii). Oh, look, you don’t need fancy genotyping to tell that wild and cultivated apples are different species. No word on the role of global wind patterns though.
Genetic diversity and population structure of advanced clones selected over forty years by a potato breeding program in the USA. Going from 214 to 43 clones doesn’t seem a game worth the candle, but someone will no doubt set me right.
The Adoption of Landraces of Durum Wheat in Sicilian Organic Cereal Farming Analysed Using a System Dynamics Approach. Follow the money.
Rediscovering ‘Mexican June’: a nearly extinct landrace maize (Zea mays L.) variety. Yes, there is money in organic systems.
Modeling impacts of faster productivity growth to inform the CGIAR initiative on Crops to End Hunger. Following the money.
Nutritional diversity and community perceptions of health and importance of foods in Kiribati: a case study. Local foods are seen to be healthier than imported, but nobody cares. Maybe because people are following the money?
Governing crop genetics in post-Soviet countries: lessons from the biodiversity hotspot Armenia. Any progress that has been made is due to committed individuals. There’s a lesson there for us all.
Archaeological science meets Māori knowledge to model pre-Columbian sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas) dispersal to Polynesia’s southernmost habitable margins. Archaeology confirms traditional oral history. A lesson there too.
Factors influencing household pulse consumption in India: A multilevel model analysis. Households that grown more pulses, eat more pulses. There endeth the lesson.

May 12, 2021May 12, 2021

Perbacco!

Macquarie University archaeologist Emlyn Dodd has a great thread over on Twitter summarizing the latest evidence for an earlier-than-generally-thought introduction of viticulture and wine-making into Bronze Age Italy.

https://twitter.com/emlynkd/status/1392028944405127169?s=12

We’re basically talking about Mycenaean involvement, rather than the conventional story based on intrepid wine-obsessed Phoenicians crossing the wine-dark sea.

As ever, for the Twitter-averse, here’s the ThreadReader version.

May 11, 2021

Managing seed on the web

The ambition of the CoEx ((Gouvernance adaptative des stratégies de gestion de la diversité cultivée)) project is to improve our understanding of the gap between (1) seed policies and laws and (2) farmers’ seed management practices. Such a gap is detrimental to the access and mobilization of a wide variety of seeds by farmers.

Intrigued? Speak French? There’s a webinar on the project today.

May 10, 2021

Feed on a better food system

I missed WWF’s report Bending the Curve: The Restorative Power of Planet-Based Diets when it came out in October last year, but the interview with one of the authors, Brent Loken, on the Feed podcast was an excellent way to catch up.

Well worth listening to the whole thing, and indeed reading the report. I really like it when complexity and nuance are embraced, and silver bullets eschewed. Here’s a few take-aways to whet your, ahem, appetite:

Shift diets: it’s not that hard. Start by de-centering beef.
Reform national dietary guidelines.
Regulate marketing food to kids.
And, speaking of marketing, learn how to make healthy food sexier.
Cut waste.