Brainfood: Corona, Restoration, Georeferencing, Bee decline, Mustard breeding, Banana seeds, Micronutrient decline, Potato micronutrients, GWAS, Trade, Deforestation alerts, Review method

3 Replies to “Brainfood: Corona, Restoration, Georeferencing, Bee decline, Mustard breeding, Banana seeds, Micronutrient decline, Potato micronutrients, GWAS, Trade, Deforestation alerts, Review method”

  1. When do we have enough biodiversity? Enough already!? Is all biodiversity good? It seems there are increasing trends in the developed world to have “biodiversity for biodiversity’s sake”. Are there debates, papers on that topic that you can recommend, or is that too hot a potato to discuss? Maybe you can place some of that in your great blog.

  2. Liugi: Maarten is right. We are being sold a dogma on the value of biodiversity. The Dasgupta review is weak on agriculture (although the food we eat is the most value of biodiversity to us).
    For example, the Dasgupta report claims (p. 75) “To these we may add the interesting finding reported in Renard and Tilman (2019) that even crop diversity can yield higher food production.” But the Renard and Tilman paper is entitled “National food production stabilized by crop diversity” – that is` yield stability’ – and is nothing to do with `higher’ production. They needed a good agronomist on the team rather than lots of citing Tilman papers. The Dasgupta review was funded by the UK Treasury and not the Ministry that covers agriculture (DEFRA): big mistake.
    After Darwin we should be looking at the results of natural selection on biodiversity: `better’ rather than `more’. This certainly applies to our crops and domestic animals. For example, our cereals were chosen (wisely) from 15,000 wild grasses.

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