Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

April 6, 2021

Genebanks at the summit

The preliminary ideas for transforming the food system, which will, ahem, feed into the UN Food Summit, are out.

https://twitter.com/FoodSystems/status/1377628805787959299

There’s a quite a bit in there about diversity — of crops, production systems and diets — but let me single out the four solutions which explicitly mention genebanks:

Action Track 3.10: Increasing agrobiodiversity for improved production and resilience.
Action Track 3.14: Broadening the genetic base of nature-positive production systems.
Action Track 5.10: Tools of accelerated breeding and trait mining underserved crops.
Action Track 5.21: Long-term conservation of food diversity in gene banks and in the field, and sustained diversification of the food basket.

Not bad, eh?

April 5, 2021April 3, 2021

Brainfood: Chinese pig breeds, Benin wild fruit, Wild lettuce, Sugarbeet breeding, Teosinte introgression, Peach genome, Wild chickpea, Garlic metabolites, CWR seeds, Macadamia genotyping, Banana database, Indigenous foodways

Identifying the unique characteristics of the Chinese indigenous pig breeds in the Yangtze River Delta region for precise conservation. Genotyping shows which pig breeds are best.
Diversity in tree and fruit traits of Strychnos spinosa Lam. along a climatic gradient in Benin: a step towards domestication. Phenotyping shows which fruit populations are best.
Lactuca georgica, a new wild source of resistance to downy mildew: comparative study to other wild lettuce relatives. Phenotyping shows which lettuce species are best.
Genetic diversity is enhanced in Wild × Cultivated hybrids of sugarbeet (Beta vulgaris L.) despite multiple selection cycles for cultivated traits. Genotyping shows cultivated x wild sugarbeet hybrids are best.
Selective sorting of ancestral introgression in maize and teosinte along an elevational cline. Genotyping shows where cultivated x wild maize hybrids do best.
Genomic analyses provide insights into peach local adaptation and responses to climate change. Genotyping shows which peach genes are best.
Identification of Novel Sources of Resistance to Ascochyta Blight in a Collection of Wild Cicer Accessions. Genotyping and phenotyping shows which wild chickpea populations are best.
Comprehensive Metabolite Profiling in Genetic Resources of Garlic (Allium sativum L.) Collected from Different Geographical Regions. Metabotyping shows which geographic regions are best for garlic.
Fertile Crescent crop progenitors gained a competitive advantage from large seedlings. Seed phenotyping shows which grasses were best for domestication.
Comparison of long-read methods for sequencing and assembly of a plant genome. Genotyping shows which genotyping is the best.
A digital catalog of high‐density markers for banana germplasm collections. Genotyping shows which banana genebank accessions are best.
“The Old Foods Are the New Foods!”: Erosion and Revitalization of Indigenous Food Systems in Northwestern North America. Who needs genotyping and phenotyping anyway?

March 30, 2021

Consulting technically on in situ crop diversity conservation

We’re in the second day of the First International Multi-stakeholder Symposium on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture: Technical Consultation on in situ conservation and on-farm management of PGRFA. If you missed the first day, you can get videos of all the papers on the symposium website, but be there this afternoon for the roundtable, please.

March 29, 2021March 29, 2021

Brainfood: On farm, Barahnaja, Vegetable landraces, Okra core, Carrot breeding, Soybean breeding, Afghan wheat, Phytochemistry, Cassava diversity, Dietary diversity double, Pollination trade

On-Farm Crop Diversity for Advancing Food Security and Nutrition. Lots of solid context, plus fun and unusual boxes on fe’i bananas, African greens and Vietnam seed clubs.
Mainstreaming Barahnaja cultivation for food and nutritional security in the Himalayan region. Could be another box in the above.
Vegetable Landraces: The “Gene Banks” for Traditional Farmers and Future Breeding Programs. Unusual way to put it, but you can see what they mean.
The World Vegetable Center Okra (Abelmoschus esculentus) Core Collection as a Source for Flooding Stress Tolerance Traits for Breeding. It’s the longer vegetative phase that possibly helps with flooding tolerance.
Strategies to Identify and Introgress Production and Quality Traits from Genetic Resources to Elite Carrot Cultivars. But maybe it’s not core collections that you need.
Genomic dissection of widely planted soybean cultivars leads to a new breeding strategy of crops in the post-genomic era. Here’s another core collection, this time of popular cultivars rather than landraces, as a basis for a strategy called Potalaization which seems to amount to starting your breeding programme with a wide genetic base.
Genetic Diversity and Population Structure Analysis of Triticum aestivum L. Landrace Panel from Afghanistan. You could select a core collections based on ecogeography. Mainly.
Spatial and evolutionary predictability of phytochemical diversity. Interestingly, the same goes for phytochemical diversity in Swiss grasslands.
DNA fingerprinting reveals varietal composition of Vietnamese cassava germplasm (Manihot esculenta Crantz) from farmers’ field and genebank collections. From 1570 clones to 31 unique genotypes. No need for a core collection then.
Dietary diversity of rural Indonesian households declines over time with agricultural production diversity even as incomes rise. Indonesians need to go back to growing more vegetables. See some of the previous papers for examples. You’re welcome.
The interplay between food market access and farm household dietary diversity in low and middle income countries: A systematic review of literature. Or their market access could be improved, though it’s unclear whether that would improve their diets.
Virtual pollination trade uncovers global dependence on biodiversity of developing countries.
Many diets depend on other people’s pollinators, though.

March 23, 2021March 23, 2021

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.

Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

Posts

Genebanks at the summit

Brainfood: Chinese pig breeds, Benin wild fruit, Wild lettuce, Sugarbeet breeding, Teosinte introgression, Peach genome, Wild chickpea, Garlic metabolites, CWR seeds, Macadamia genotyping, Banana database, Indigenous foodways

Consulting technically on in situ crop diversity conservation

Brainfood: On farm, Barahnaja, Vegetable landraces, Okra core, Carrot breeding, Soybean breeding, Afghan wheat, Phytochemistry, Cassava diversity, Dietary diversity double, Pollination trade

Genebanks on the air