A bit of a roundup of data stuff today. Things have been piling up in my to-blog folder, and the time has come to tidy up.

First up, and most relevant here, is thewebinar on how to useGenesys. It’s long, admittedly, but well worth it if you have anything to do with genebanks. Genesys can accommodate phenomic data, of course, and coincidentally here’s a set of training materials on how to docharacterization and evaluation of plant genetic resources.

The botanic gardens community has its own Genesys-type thing, calledPlantSearch, and there’s been anupgrade recently that readers here might be interested in. All that’s missing for the trifecta isherbaria :)

Finally, you might want to combine provenance data from Genesys (or indeed theforest genetic resources databases we blogged about earlier this week) with different features of the environment, right? Right. So let me quickly point to new spatial datasets on theworld’s soils andagro-ecological zonation, the extent ofcropland in Africa, and — why not? — the global distribution ofcattle, goats, sheep and horses.

• Grains of Wisdom: Insights into the Minds of Top Chefs—A Synthesis of Expert Interviews and Literature. A good chef can make even quinoa palatable.
• Citizen science informs demand-driven breeding of opportunity crops. I wonder if tricot can make quinoa palatable. Never mind, it’s good for a lot of other things.
• Recurrent evolution of cryptic triploids in cultivated enset increases yield. Unclear if triploid enset is any more palatable than the diploid. Interesting that traditional knowledge picks up ploidy.
• Is there unrecognized potential in neglected livestock species in Sub-Saharan Africa? A systematic review of four selected species. The benefits include sustainability, nutrition and income, but not higher palatability apparently.
• Enhancing Nutrition and Cost Efficiency in Kenyan School Meals Using Neglected and Underutilized Species and Linear Programming: A Case Study from an Informal Settlement. Better palatability was not included in the linear programming, alongside such staples (geddit?) as cost and nutritional value. But it could be, right?
• Cocoyam (Xanthosoma sagittifolium (L.) Schott) genetic resources and breeding: a review of 50 years of research efforts. Unclear if enhanced palatability is a breeding aim. But it should be.
• Strengthening the millet economy: lessons from a South Indian case study. Palatability is not an issue. Drudgery is.
• The traditional knowledge about the biodiversity of edible Brazilian fruits and their pollinators: an integrative review. Presumably includes data on palatability? And ploidy :)
• Wild edible fruit utilization patterns in Garhwal himalaya (Uttarakhand, India): a multi-decadal perspective. Reasons for decline in consumption include limited traditional knowledge transfer, time constraints, migration, generation gap, and hygiene concerns. But not, apparently, palatability.

As well as the 3rd State of the World’s Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, the2nd State of the World’s Forest Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture was also launched atFAO Commission meeting the week before last. Some headline numbers? There are about 58,000 tree species worldwide, about 30% of whch are threatened and 1,400 and 1,100 species are included inin situ andex situ conservation programs, respectively.

At least some of the data behind the forest report is to be found in FAO’s new global information system,SilvaGRIS, launched at the same time. SilvaGRIS joins a fairly crowded field — or perhaps I should forest — which includes variousproducts from the World Agroforestry Centre, the restoration-focusedTree Diversity database, and Europe’s own portalEUFGIS. No doubt each does something different, but a guide through the thicket of resources might be useful.

I spent all last week at the20th Session of the FAO Commission on Genetic Resources in Rome: “[t]he Commission is the only permanent intergovernmental body that specifically addresses all components of biological diversity for food and agriculture.” As ever, there’s a great summary of the session atEarth Negotiations Bulletin. Maybe the most significant milestone was the launch of theThird Report on the State of the World’s Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, 15 years after thesecond report. FAO has a nice summary of thekey findings. You know how we have been saying that there are 1750 genebanks in the world? Well, we can’t say that any more: due to a tighter definition, there are now 867 genebanks.

If you want some more fun numbers, elsewhere I have blogged about how the work of my own organization, the Global Crop Diversity Trust,is featured in the report.

• The genomic origin of early maize in eastern North America. There were at least 2 eastern dispersals of ancient maize from the US Southwest.
• Archaeological findings show the extent of primitive characteristics of maize in South America. At about the same time, semi-domesticated maize also reached deep into South America.
• Maize monoculture supported pre-Columbian urbanism in southwestern Amazonia. Including the Llanos de Moxos in Bolivia, where it supported cities.
• Millets, dogs, pigs and permanent settlement: productivity transitions in Neolithic northern China. In China, it was millet that supported cities. Well, and pigs.
• Species identification of silks by protein mass spectrometry reveals evidence of wild silk use in antiquity. People in those cities had to wear fancy silken clothes, right?
• Ancient genomics and the origin, dispersal, and development of domestic sheep. Sheep domestication started in Anatolia, but that wasn’t the end of it, because there was an influx of diversity from the steppes in the Bronze Age. Nice parallel with human diversity. Different to the Chinese millet-pig story though.
• Unveiling the culinary tradition of ‘focaccia’ in Late Neolithic Mesopotamia by way of the integration of use-wear, phytolith & organic-residue analyses. You can trace focaccia way back. Goes quite nicely with roast sheep, I suspect.
• Different strategies in Indus agriculture: the goals and outcomes of farming choices. Even ancient cultures sometimes felt the need to diversify.