Nibbles: Afghanistan, Cereal domestication, Apple degradation, Map app

Another soldier, this time a Brit, “Rebuilding Afghanistan through agriculture … as part of a counter-narcotics cell that encouraged farmers to grow legal agricultural crops, such as wheat, instead of illegal opium poppies”.
Wild wheats and barley responded better to higher CO2, and that’s why they were domesticated.
Climate change is also changing one of my favourite apples — for the worse.
Kew reviews map app. No idea where our mapping expert is.

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.