Climate change

May 3, 2024May 3, 2024

Forgotten crops in the limelight

The paper “Forgotten food crops in sub-Saharan Africa for healthy diets in a changing climate” by Maarten van Zonneveld, Roeland Kindt, Stepha McMullin, Enoch G. Achigan-Dako, Sognigbé N’Danikou, Wei-hsun Hsieh, Yann-rong Lin, and Ian K. Dawson has won the PNAS 2023 Cozzarelli Prize for the best paper of the year in Applied Biological, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences. Here’s the abstract:

As the climate changes, major staple crop production in sub-Saharan Africa becomes increasingly vulnerable. Underutilized traditional food plants offer opportunities for diversifying cropping systems. In this study, the authors used climate niche modeling to assess the potential of 138 traditional food plants to diversify or replace staple crop production in sub-Saharan Africa by 2070. The authors report that staple crops may no longer be able to grow at approximately 10% of locations by 2070. Further, the authors identified 58 traditional crops that provide complementary micronutrient contents suitable for integration into staple cropping systems under current and projected climatic conditions. The results suggest that diversifying sub-Saharan African food production with underutilized crops could improve climate resilience and dietary health.

And here’s a video explaining the results:

April 9, 2024April 9, 2024

Brainfood: Food shift, Food footprint, Periodic Table of Food, Nutritious food, Diverse food, Food seed kits, Food meta-metrics

Food matters: Dietary shifts increase the feasibility of 1.5°C pathways in line with the Paris Agreement. Go flexitarian.
Biodiversity footprints of 151 popular dishes from around the world. Go flexitarian?
Periodic Table of Food Initiative for generating biomolecular knowledge of edible biodiversity. Unclear if flexitarians have the best molecules.
Environmentally protective diets may come with trade-offs for micronutrient adequacy. More sustainable may mean less nutritious. Flexitarians unavailable for comment.
Market engagement, crop diversity, dietary diversity, and food security: evidence from small-scale agricultural households in Uganda. Market access and crop diversification are both good for dietary diversity and food security. The ultimate flexitarianism.
Sustainability of one-time seed distributions: a long-term follow-up of vegetable seed kits in Tanzania. Now watch flexitarians demand an even playing field.
Developing holistic assessments of food and agricultural systems: A meta‑framework for metrics users. One framework to rule all of the above.

April 5, 2024April 8, 2024

Nibbles: Arboreta, IPES-Food, CGN, China genebank, Banana diversity, British hops, Coffee & deforestation

Arboreta have a community. And a newsletter. And a paper.
IPES-Food has a new website.
The Dutch genebank describes its users.
China has a back-up genebank.
Dan Saladino has a new article out, and it’s bananas.
The Brits freak out about their beer. As usual. And with limited justification.
The EU gets tough on coffee.

March 26, 2024March 25, 2024

Nibbles: VACS, FAO forgotten foods, African roots, Hopi corn, Adivasis rice, Sustainable farming, Llama history, Vicuña sweaters, Portuguese cattle, Mexico genebank, NZ genebank, Bat pollination, Eat This Newsletter, WEF

More on the US push for opportunity crops.
Oh look there’s a whole compendium on African opportunity crops from FAO.
Many of them are roots and tubers.
For the Hopi, maize is an opportunity crop.
For the Adivasis, it’s rice.
And more along the same lines from Odisha.
Llamas were an opportunity for lots of people down the ages.
…and still are, for some.
Portugal eschews llamas for an ancient cattle breed.
I bet Mexico’s genebank offers some amazing opportunities.
And New Zealand’s too.
Let’s not forget bats. Yes, bats.
Jeremy’s latest newsletter tackles turmeric, pepper and sweet potatoes, among other things.
And the best way to frame all of the above is that the World Economic Forum wants governments to ban people from growing their own food because that causes climate change.

March 25, 2024March 21, 2024

Brainfood: Wild melon dispersal, Fertile Crescent domestications, Angiosperm threats, Wild rice alliance, Wild potato leaves, Brassica oleracea pangenome, Wild Vigna nutrients

Frugivory by carnivores: Black-backed jackals are key dispersers of seeds of the scented !nara melon in the Namib Desert. Jackals pee on wild melon relatives and disperse their seeds, not necessarily in that order.
Out of the Shadows: Reestablishing the Eastern Fertile Crescent as a Center of Agricultural Origins: Part 1. Go East, young archaeobotanists!
Extinction risk predictions for the world’s flowering plants to support their conservation. Fancy maths says 45% of angiosperms are potentially threatened. Same for crop wild relatives in the Eastern Fertile Crescent? Black-backed jackals unavailable for comment.
Global Wild Rice Germplasm Resources Conservation Alliance: WORLD WILD-RICE WIRING. Scientists get together to conserve global wild rice germplasm resources, understand the ecology of wild rice environments, identify and address threats, define effective ways to use wild species in rice improvement, and provide data for decision-making. Not a minute too soon, given the above.
Morphometric analysis of wild potato leaves. Who needs genotyping anyway.
Large-scale gene expression alterations introduced by structural variation drive morphotype diversification in Brassica oleracea. Brassica scientists need genotyping, apparently, that’s who.
Exploring the nutritional potentials of wild Vigna legume species for neo-domestication prospects. Not much potential if they go extinct though. Quick, photograph their leaves!