Wild edible plants are still eaten by a large section of the global population and ensure both affordable food and nutritional security. We tested this in an Indian context, where an enormous diversity of such plants constitutes a significant part of the rural diet and their acceptance has been high. In this study, we assessed the diversity of wild edible plant resource and the importance of species based on the use and its pattern. We have also shortlisted a set of plants to make an informed decision on prioritization. We found a great variety of plants (1,403 species) from 184 families were consumed across India, although the first 44 families (24%) contributed largely to the (75%) diversity. Leguminosae followed by Compositae, Poaceae, Malvaceae, and Rosaceae, were the families with the highest number of species. We note that a few species from the large pool were extensively used throughout the country while another few were valued for their multiple edible plant parts. Leafy shoots (722 species) followed by fruits (652 species) were the two most-eaten plant parts. Our results strengthen the fact that: (a) wild edibles have been an integral part of the diet; (b) their widespread assimilation into local food culture suggests an untapped potential to ensure easy availability and access to micronutrients for sustainable food systems, and thus in social welfare; and (c) they should be incorporated into the national food policy for formal cultivation and promotion.

Over the last approximately 2.6 Myr, Earth's climate has been dominated by cyclical ice ages that have profoundly affected species' population sizes, but the impact of impending anthropogenic climate change on species’ extinction potential remains a worrying problem. We investigated 11 bat species from different taxonomic, ecological and geographical backgrounds using combined information from palaeoclimatic habitat reconstructions and genomes to analyse biotic impacts of historic climate change. We discover tightly correlated fluctuations between species' historic distribution and effective population size, identify frugivores as particularly susceptible to global warming, pinpoint large insectivores as having overall low effective population size and flag the onset of the Holocene (approx. 10–12 000 years ago) as the period with the generally lowest effective population sizes across the last approximately 1 Myr. Our study shows that combining genomic and palaeoclimatological approaches reveals effects of climatic shifts on genetic diversity and may help predict impacts of future climate change.

No abstract

Crop domestication is a remarkable example of evolution of wildly growing plants into cultivable forms through human selection. Following the domestication of rice almost 10,000 years ago, ancient farmers selected many rice lineages for diverse agronomic and cultural traits, like grain size, shape and colour; awn length; pest resistance; and aroma etc. In this study, examining phenotypic traits of a large collection of Indian rice landraces (all accessed from Vrihi, rice seed bank, ) we characterize the huge phenotypic diversity, and find that a few grain, panicle and leaf traits are major drivers of this diversity. We also demonstrate the existence of short grain aromatic landraces perhaps with independently evolved aroma trait; unlike introgression from japonica into indica group, as evidenced in Basmati-type long grain varieties. The independent origin of aroma in indica rice is fascinating as it explores lesser known aspects of indica rice domestication and diversification.

Major novel physiological or phenotypic adaptations often require accompanying modifications at the genic level. Conversely, the detection of considerable contractions and/or expansions of gene families can be an indicator of fundamental but unrecognized physiological change. We sequenced a novel fruit bat genome (Cynopterus brachyotis) and adopted a comparative approach to reconstruct the evolution of fruit bats, mapping contractions and expansions of gene families along their evolutionary history. Despite a radical change in life history as compared with other bats (e.g., loss of echolocation, large size, and frugivory), fruit bats have undergone surprisingly limited change in their genic composition, perhaps apart from a potentially novel gene family expansion relating to telomere protection and longevity. In sharp contrast, within fruit bats, the new Cynopterus genome bears the signal of unusual gene loss and gene family contraction, despite its similar morphology and lifestyle to two other major fruit bat lineages. Most missing genes are regulatory, immune-related, and olfactory in nature, illustrating the diversity of genomic strategies employed by bats to contend with responses to viral infection and olfactory requirements. Our results underscore that significant fluctuations in gene family composition are not always associated with obvious examples of novel physiological and phenotypic adaptations but may often relate to less-obvious shifts in immune strategies.