Nibbles: Millets galore, Human diversity & ag, Super farmers, Extinction is forever, Indian nutrition maps, Future Food competition, Banana viruses, Cassava in Brazil & Africa, Sugar book, Fairchild & Irma, Vegetable ROI, Embrapa beans, Certified coffee, Legal pot, Native American foods

Today’s new genome is pearl millet. The most climate-smart of crops? Now, to process it more easily.
Finger millet is not too bad either.
Agriculture was good for human diversity, at least in Papua New Guinea. Elsewhere, maybe not so much.
Julio Hancco Mamani grows 400 potato varieties up in the Andes (but how did it all start?). And Rahibai Soma Popere “15 varieties of rice, nine varieties of pigeon pea and sixty varieties of vegetables, besides many oil seeds” in Maharashtra.
“West Bengal government encourages cultivation of extinct rice varieties.” Wait, what?
Presumably not extinct like silphium.
India’s first nutrition atlas will maybe tells us where more Rahibai Soma Poperes are most needed.
Future Food includes seeds.
Cleaning up bananas.
Would love to have been on the “Brazilian Cassava Learning Journey.” Tanzania next?
The bitter side of sugar.
Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden damaged by Irma.
Research on vegetables really pays off, vegetable researchers say.
Brazilian bean catalog launched.
Certifying coffee seeds.
Pot next?
Closely followed by Navajo tea.

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.