Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

January 28, 2025January 27, 2025

Rounding up the breadfruit

Jeremy’s latest Eat This Newsletter has a piece on Dumbarton Oaks’ Plant of the Month feature on breadfruit. And much else besides. Do have a look. In contrast to Jeremy, I myself have knowingly eaten breadfruit, in various forms. It makes pretty good chips. I’ve also blogged about it here — a lot.

Breadfruit’s Bounty

Dumbarton Oaks is a beautiful building, museum, library and garden in Washington DC and I have often linked to its Plant of the Month features. This month’s is breadfruit, and well worth exploring. I’ve never knowingly eaten breadfruit, though I have tasted its close relative jackfruit, and yet one thing I know about it is that it was at the heart of the Mutiny on the Bounty. The British government tasked Captain William Bligh with transporting breadfruit seedlings from their home in the Pacific to the Caribbean, where it was hoped the trees would provide cheap food for enslaved people on the sugar plantations. Then it gets complicated.

There’s a lot to savour in the story of breadfruit’s enforced migration from its origins in the Pacific to the plantations of the Caribbean and the lasting impacts there. The article brings all these facets out with (occasionally clunky) links to images, maps and cooking videos.

January 27, 2025

Brainfood: Diversity patterns double, Diversification drivers, Polish genetic erosion, Tibetan naked barley diversity, Indian sorghum diversity, Do novo domestication, Eggplant tree, Banana diversity, Pearl millet diversity, Pigeon pea genome, Grasspea genome, Jersey bull diversity

Floristic classifications and bioregionalizations are not predictors of intra-specific evolutionary patterns. You can’t use spatial structures in interspecific diversity to predict spatial structure in instraspecific diversity. Gotta do the hard work, there are no shortcuts.
Intraspecific trait variability in wild plant populations predicts neither variability nor performance in a common garden. You can’t use intraspecific diversity in wild populations to predict how those populations will do elsewhere. Gotta do the hard work, there are no shortcuts.
Farming for the future: Understanding factors enabling the adoption of diversified farming systems. Access to extension services, strong social networks, and perceived environmental benefits contribute to the diversification of farming systems, but their effects are context-specific. So yeah, you guessed it, you still gotta do the hard work.
Changes in Plant Genetic Resources in the Southeast Region of Poland from the 1980s to 2023. I wonder which one(s) of the above has been missing in the Lubelskie Voivodeship.
Abundant Genetic Diversity Harbored by Traditional Naked Barley Varieties on Tibetan Plateau: Implications in Their Effective Conservation and Utilization. I wonder which one(s) of the above has been most effective in the Tibetan Plateau.
Genetic diversity in in situ and ex situ collections of sorghum [Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench] landraces. I wonder which one(s) of the above has been most effective in norther Karnataka.
Enhancing food security amid climate change through rewilding and de novo domestication. Sounds like hard work. But worth doing.
Characteristics of the ET, a new species created by interspecific hybridization of two wild eggplants. Sounds like hard work. But worth doing?
Painting the diversity of a world’s favorite fruit: A next generation catalog of cultivated bananas. Chromosome painting, that is. Definitely worth doing.
Delineation of selection efficiency and coincidence of multi-trait-based models in a global germplasm collection of pearl millet for a comprehensive assessment of stability and high performing genotypes. Stable AND high-yielding? Sounds like the hard work has been done.
Chromosome-scale reference genome of an ancient landrace: unveiling the genetic basis of seed weight in the food legume crop pigeonpea (Cajanus cajan). Now for the hard work…
A chromosome-scale reference genome of grasspea (Lathyrus sativus). Now for the even harder work…
Assessment of genetic diversity, inbreeding, and collection completeness of Jersey bulls in the US National Animal Germplasm Program. I suspect it will be hard work, but don’t forget the low merit bulls. And that probably goes for plants too.

November 18, 2024November 18, 2024

Brainfood: Cattle domestication double, Sheep domestication, Lomas in Peru, Sweet potato in Aotearoa, Bananas in SE Asia, African wild eggplants, Brassicaceae conservation review, Vanilla in Madagascar

Global dispersal and adaptive evolution of domestic cattle: a genomic perspective. The scope of adaptation is pretty amazing, and has been aided by introgression from wild relatives.
The genomic natural history of the aurochs. Which is just as well because the initial diversity of the domesticate was probably rather limited, at least in Europe.
The Population History of Domestic Sheep Revealed by Paleogenomes. Early domesticated sheep genomes were pretty dynamic too, sometimes in parallel with shepherds and sometimes not.
Late pre-Hispanic fog oasis settlements and long-term human occupation on the Peruvian central coast from satellite imagery. No cattle or sheep in pre-Hispanic lomas, but plenty of camelids and crops.
American sweet potato and Asia-Pacific crop experimentation during early colonisation of temperate-climate Aotearoa/New Zealand. One of those crops was in Aotearoa by the 14th century, which is amazing.
Musa species in mainland Southeast Asia: From wild to domesticate. Even the very wild species are affected by human use.
Landscape genomics reveals genetic signals of environmental adaptation of African wild eggplants. Environment is not the main driver of selection, but still pretty important and thus useful in breeding. Kinda like cattle?
Current status of global conservation and characterisation of wild and cultivated Brassicaceae genetic resources. Gotta conserve those wild relatives probably though, if they are to be used.
Genome-wide assessment of genetic variation and population structure in cultivated vanilla from Madagascar. The results of a breeding programme 80 years ago involving wild relatives can be seen in the current structure of diversity.

November 13, 2024November 14, 2024

Wild strawberries and other Nordic resources

NordGen is running a great series of weekly webinars on crop wild relatives conservation. You can find recordings of the past three on their website, but I can’t figure out how to sign up for future ones.

LATER: Thanks to Sara for her comment providing the link you’ll need to sign up for future webinars.

November 11, 2024November 8, 2024

Brainfood: CC & livelihoods, Landscape approaches, Seed system metrics, Grain traders, Cultivar adoption, WTP for African rice, Restoration networks

A systematic literature review on the impact of climate change on the livelihoods of smallholder farmers in South Africa. Things look bad, but crop and livestock diversity (among other things) can help. If only they can get out to farmers I guess.
Reconciling conservation and development requires enhanced integration and broader aims: A cross-continental assessment of landscape approaches. Correction, I meant out into the landscape.
Towards gender-transformative metrics in seed system performance measurement: insights for policy and practice in Sub-Sahara Africa. How do you know if crop diversity will be able to get into those farming landscapes? You need these gender-transformative metrics. Things like the number of community seed banks serving women and youths, for example.
Cowpea grain sales by women and men traders in local markets of Senegal. Women seed traders need help scaling up. Maybe community seed banks could help?
Promoting new crop cultivars in low-income countries requires a transdisciplinary approach. Maybe women seed traders could help.
An experimental approach to farmer valuation of African rice genetic resources. Farmers are willing to pay as much for landrace seeds as for improved varieties, and those who know about landraces are willing to pay more for their seeds than those who don’t. Good for those women traders to know.
Restoration seed and plant material supply chains are complex social networks. And not just for restoration, I’d say.