Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

August 27, 2020August 28, 2020

Genebank data update

I’ve decided to promote a couple of Nibbles from Monday to a full post. Because they’re important and I don’t want them to get overlooked, and I just don’t know how many people actually work through all the Nibbles. Maybe I should have led with these.

Anyway, the thing is, the USDA’s National Plant Germplasm System has just launched its new GRIN-Global webpage. ((Coincidentally, it also has an updated Wikipedia entry.)) Through it, you can search for, and order, material from any of the system’s constituent genebanks. Of which there are, you know, a lot.

Now, don’t @ me if what you see there is not exactly the same as what’s in Genesys. They’ve been somewhat preoccupied in Beltsville, but we hope to get an update of their data very soon now. ((All other recent uploads and refreshes are here; note the recent addition of 7000-odd rice accessions from the Myanmar national genebank.))

Meanwhile, the potato-breeding machine that is Cultivariable has started publishing his latest evaluation data on (some of) the USDA’s potato germplasm (click on “Evaluation Year” and choose “2020”).

But will it find its way into any of the above-mentioned databases?

Maybe.

August 26, 2020August 27, 2020

Animated maize

Did you actually click on that really cool GIF from Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra and Dolores Piperno illustrating a paper on the post-domestication movement of maize that we linked to in Brainfood on Monday? No?

You’re really missing out…

Somebody do Panicum miliaceum now.

No, wait, we have that too.

August 25, 2020November 3, 2020

The end of Cornucopia

Sad news from Jeremy’s latest newsletter:

When I read this piece about One Tasmanian’s 54-year obsession to catalogue all of the world’s edible plants to end malnutrition all I could think was, “has he never heard of Stephen Facciola’s Cornucopia? I should introduce them.”

A bit of due diligence later, I discovered Facciola had died a little more than a month ago. Stephen Facciola’s edible world is better than any obituary you’re liable to read.

The Tasmanian’s name is Bruce French, and you can see the fruits of his labours online at Food Plants International.

August 24, 2020August 27, 2020

Brainfood: Seeds & corona, Bleeding finance, Maiz de humedo, High altitude maize, Open data, Seed swapping, Wheat core, Banana epigenetics, Soil biodiversity, Ethiopian mustard diversity, Ryegrass GWAS, Peanut antioxidants, CWR conservation, VRR

Seed security response during COVID-19: building on evidence and orienting to the future. First and foremost, support farmers save their seeds.
Blended finance for agriculture: exploring the constraints and possibilities of combining financial instruments for sustainable transitions. How about supporting farmers save their seeds?
Dynamic conservation of genetic resources: Rematriation of the maize landrace Jala. Genebanks helping farmers save their seeds.
Molecular Parallelism Underlies Convergent Highland Adaptation of Maize Landraces. Early farmers saving their maize seeds in the Mexican highlands eventually helped out farmers in the Andean highlands. With GIF goodness.
Open access to genetic sequence data maximizes value to scientists, farmers, and society. How will it help farmers save their seeds?
Applying Knowledge of Southern Seed Savers to Community-Based Agricultural Biodiversity Conservation Practice. The people saving and swapping seeds in the Ozarks respond to films, need how-to manuals, and could be a tad more diverse. I suspect this is not just true in Arkansas.
Characterization of wheat germplasm conserved in the Indian National Genebank and establishment of a composite core collection. Farmers trying to save their seeds rejoice.
Heritable epigenetic diversity for conservation and utilization of epigenetic germplasm resources of clonal East African Highland banana (EAHB) accessions. Hey, it’s not just seeds. Methylation patterns follow geography but not morphology in a genetically uniform group of vegetatively propagated cultivars.
Blind spots in global soil biodiversity and ecosystem function research. Not now, soil biodiversity, I’m too busy dealing with seeds.
Narrow genetic base shapes population structure and linkage disequilibrium in an industrial oilseed crop, Brassica carinata A. Braun. Landraces of Ethiopian mustard and improved lines cluster in separate groups, but overall diversity is low. Not enough seeds saved, perhaps?
High-Throughput Genome-Wide Genotyping To Optimize the Use of Natural Genetic Resources in the Grassland Species Perennial Ryegrass (Lolium perenne L.). Only possible because of saved seeds.
Presence of resveratrol in wild Arachis species adds new value to this overlooked genetic resource. I hope we’ve saved enough seeds.
Main Challenges and Actions Needed to Improve Conservation and Sustainable Use of Our Crop Wild Relatives. It’s quite difficult — and insufficient — to save the seeds of wild species, but we should do it nevertheless.
Influence of diversity and intensification level on vulnerability, resilience and robustness of agricultural systems. Why we should all save seeds.

August 20, 2020August 21, 2020

Beating a (cassava) virus in SE Asia

**Guess which part of the field has the yield trial for the #CMD resistant clones?**

CMD being Cassava Mosaic Disease, one of the most damaging of crop viruses. The question, and photo, come from a recent tweet from a regional team coordinated by the entity formerly known as CIAT that is trying to develop “sustainable solutions to cassava disease in SE Asia” with support from ACIAR and CGIAR’s Research Program on Roots, Tubers and Bananas.

Some of the resistant varieties that are doing so well in the photo are identified elsewhere in the thread as the IITA lines TME3, TMEB419, TMS980581, TMS980505 and TMS920057.

But this PowerPoint from Dr Xiaofei Zhang explains that those were only the beginning. Additional promising material came from a bunch of other sources.