Nibbles: African seeds, African needs, Egyptian seed preservation, Archaeocandy, Conservation, Seed swap site, Water buffalo genome, Anti-striga films, Entomophagy, Black sigatoka, Pavlovsk, Cannabis genome

Gates just gave AGRA $56 million to make new seed varieties available. PASS still not collecting the diversity it hopes to displace.
Hang on though. Africa needs a “Green renaissance, not revolution”.
Saving seeds the ancient Egyptian way.
Eating sweets the ancient Papuan (and others) way.
Odd to hear an agrobiodiversity dude talking about silver bullets – even with a question mark.
SeedZoo site offers a space to give and to receive “traditional and indigenous food plants from around the world”.
Today’s forthcoming genome of agricultural interest: water buffalo.
Farmer to farmer films – gender sensitive, natch – “fight against striga”.
Assessing the Potential of Insects as Food and Feed in assuring Food Security, from the FAO document repository.
Much sound, less light, on black Sigatoka disease, from the BBC (natch).
Vaviblog rounds up the latest skinny on Pavlovsk.
And speaking of Vavilov, the latest genome to be sequenced has a VIR connection.

A paean to diverse diets is just what we all need.
And another one, from the MIT Technology Review of all places.
Menawhile, there’s only one reference to dietary diversity in the World Bank’s investment framework for nutrition.
Maybe you have to quantify that diversity before you can save it? Now where have I heard that before?
Meanwhile, Europe reports on biodiversity-friendly farming practices. Does that include the biodiversity of the actual crops? Perhaps surprisingly, yes!
You want biodiversity-friendly farming practices? Talk to Indigenous people. The Committee on World Food Security (CFS) has launched an e-consultation on “Preserving, strengthening and promoting Indigenous Peoples’ food and knowledge systems and traditional practices for sustainable food systems.”
There’s diversity in asparagus too.
Genebanks can help with those biodiversity-friendly practices, diverse diets and rops and Indigenous practices.
Even big international genebanks.
Even the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.
But some are in trouble.
Though others are coming back.