Nibbles: Strampelli, Gender, State of World’s Plants, Wild peanuts, Istambul gardens, ICRAF & CIFOR DG chat, Biofortification, Cowpea genome, SSEx Q&A, Rice resilience, Cacao & coffee microbiome, Mapping crops, BBC Discovery, EU seed law

One Reply to “Nibbles: Strampelli, Gender, State of World’s Plants, Wild peanuts, Istambul gardens, ICRAF & CIFOR DG chat, Biofortification, Cowpea genome, SSEx Q&A, Rice resilience, Cacao & coffee microbiome, Mapping crops, BBC Discovery, EU seed law”

  1. Seed Savers Exchange: “Since the early 1600s there have been 20,000 different varieties of apples documented in North America. Today, we think there are a little more than 4,000 varieties remaining.” This is given as evidence for decline in diversity. It verges on being meaningless. The real useful message is how many apple varieties were in North America in 1491? None. The way to get varietal diversity and varietal quality is to introduce varieties from all over the place, if at all possible going for varietal quality rather than quantity of genetic diversity. Try everything everywhere and discard the duds. Only then do you need breeding to refine the good varieties (with, if possible, access to global diversity). The massive success of US agriculture followed this pattern: it could be a very strong model for other countries.

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