Nibbles: Benchmarking, Unintended consequences, Kenyan seeds, WFP, China genebank, Evolutionary plant breeding, Citrus, Maize, Lotus silk, Azolla, Spanish genebank

How committed are 350 food companies to food system transformation? Well, take a wild guess…
Mind you, transformation is tricky.
A climate-smart seed system for Kenya? Would be transformative for sure.
Great that WFP got the Nobel Peace Prize, but they’re only part of the food system picture.
Another part is genebanks, as China recognizes.
One way to use all that material in genebanks is through evolutionary plant breeding.
Citrus: How it started. How it’s going. Meme alert.
Maize was taken back to Mexico from South America in ancient times. And those early farmers really knew how to process it for maximum benefit, something we’re forgetting.
A deep dive into lotus silk.
An even deeper dive into Azolla-covered paddies.
Esteban Hernández of the Andalusian genebank gets his 15 minutes.

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.