Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

March 23, 2021March 23, 2021

Genebanks on the air

Field, Lab, Earth, the podcast of the American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America and Soil Science Society of America has a couple of episodes out on the history of crop diversity conservation. The first is an interview with Dr Helen Anne Curry on genebanks.

And the second is a talk entitled “Varietal Timelines and Leadership Challenges Affecting the Legacy of Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov” with Dr Joel Cohen. It’s freely available until 5 April.

March 22, 2021March 22, 2021

Brainfood: DSI, SMTA, Geno-Phenotyping, Adoption ceiling, Vegetable seeds, Neutral diversity, Trait variation, Feed interventions, Polyploidy, Varietal selection, Sugarcane genomes, African supply chains, Farmers Rights, Agroforestry

Bringing access and benefit sharing into the digital age. One thing needed: a Multi‐stakeholder Committee on the Governance of Digital Sequence Information. Well that was easy.
A contract‐law analyses of the SMTA of the Plant Treaty: Can it work as a binding contract? Three things: the SMTA needs to be valid, binding and enforceable. Which it isn’t now, apparently.
Recent Large-Scale Genotyping and Phenotyping of Plant Genetic Resources of Vegetatively Propagated Crops. Five things: standardized SSR loci, GBS-derived SNPs, SNP arrays, high-throughput phenotyping system, GWAS.
“Breaking through the 40% adoption ceiling: Mind the seed system gaps.” A perspective on seed systems research for development in One CGIAR. Four things: capture the demand characteristics of farmers, identify effective seed delivery pathways, ensure seed health and stopping the spread of disease, effective policies and regulation. I guess this is where the Toolkit comes in.
Africa’s evolving vegetable seed sector: status, policy options and lessons from Asia. Four things: technical capacity, regulations, extension, marketing. Well, yeah.
The inflated significance of neutral genetic diversity in conservation genetics. Three things: functional genetic diversity, demographic history, and ecological relationships.
Intraspecific trait variation in plants: a renewed focus on its role in ecological processes. Three things: report individual replicates and population means, investigate mechanisms that affect ITVs, studies that span sub-disciplines (see paper above).
A scoping review of feed interventions and livelihoods of small-scale livestock keepers. Three things: consider absorptive capacity of livestock keepers and extensionists, focus on semi-commercial sector, consider resource requirements of feed options. It’s all in the podcast. Remarkable similarity with the vegetables thing above, eh?
Induced Polyploidy: A Tool for Forage Species Improvement. Two things. Thanks, colchicine.
Varietal selection in marginal agroecological niches and cultural landscapes: the case of rice in the Togo Hills. Three things: participation, low-input conditions, landraces.
Three founding ancestral genomes involved in the origin of sugarcane. A, B and C.
“Essential non‐essentials”: COVID‐19 policy missteps in Nigeria rooted in persistent myths about African food supply chains. Five things: imports are not central to food security, rural families buy a lot of food, small farmers access markets after all, small & medium enterprises are hidden but not missing, domestic distribution is important.
What Should Farmers’ Rights Look Like? The Possible Substance of a Right. 64 things.
The one hundred tree species prioritized for planting in the tropics and subtropics as indicated by database mining. Bingo!

March 17, 2021

Seed sector lays it out

So seed companies have come up with a “Seed Sector Declaration” as a part of their engagement with the UN Food Systems Summit in September 2021.

Among other things, they commit to

CONTINUE our support for the conservation of genetic resources and biodiversity

while asking their partners to

SUPPORT seed sector use of genetic resources, essential to new seed varieties, by supporting improvements to the work of bodies, such as the ITPGRFA and CBD

Can’t help thinking we’ve heard this sort of thing before.

March 15, 2021March 12, 2021

Brainfood: Green Revolution, Hybrid wheat, Pacific PGRFA, Temperate maize, Maize seed, Yemeni coffee, Nutrition agriculture, Vanilla breeding, Cultivar mixture, Meta-analysis, Algerian forages

Health Impacts of the Green Revolution: Evidence from 600,000 births across the Developing World. Modern varieties reduced infant mortality from 18% to 12-15% across 21,604 locations in 37 developing countries between 1961–2000.
Wide adaptation of Green Revolution wheat: International roots and the Indian context of a new plant breeding ideal, 1960–1970. Thank goodness for photoperiod insensitivity, eh?
The genetic basis of cytoplasmic male sterility and fertility restoration in wheat. Does this mean hybrid wheat is the next revolution?
Unlocking the inherent potential of plant genetic resources: food security and climate adaptation strategy in Fiji and the Pacific. The Pacific is still waiting for its revolution.
A worldwide maize panel revealed new genetic variation for cold tolerance. Inbreds from Minnesota and Spain could spearhead a temperate maize revolution.
Seed longevity of maize conserved under germplasm bank conditions for up to 60 years. Keep those Minnesotan and Spanish inbreds cold, whatever you do.
Unveiling a unique genetic diversity of cultivated Coffea arabica L. in its main domestication center: Yemen. Unique Yemeni material could spearhead a coffee revolution. How to store those seeds, though?
Household behaviour and nutrition-sensitive agricultural practices: Experiences of smallholder farmers in Northern West Bengal, India. Maybe what’s needed is a revolution in women’s empowerment.
The beautiful hills: half a century of vanilla (Vanilla planifolia Jacks. ex Andrews) breeding in Madagascar. There was a vanilla revolution in Madagascar in the 50s and nobody knows about it.
The potential of cultivar mixtures to reduce fungicide input and mitigate fungicide resistance development. The cultivar mixture revolution is still to come.
Dynamic meta-analysis: a method of using global evidence for local decision making. The tender green shoots of a data-driven revolution?
Molecular characterization of Algerian populations of cocksfoot and tall fescue: Ploidy level determination and genetic diversity analysis. I just like the word cocksfoot.

March 12, 2021March 12, 2021

What crop should I grow to get rich?

I’m sure we’ve blogged about this visualization before, but I can’t for the life of me find it. So here it is again, thanks to someone reupping it on Twitter.