Nibbles: Seed info, Potato 101, Coffee 101, Rice repatriation, Iraq genebank, Use or lose, Teff breeding, Micronutrients, Agrobiodiversity, Plant a Seed Kit, WorldVeg to Svalbard, Seed Health Units

Eastern and Southern Africa Small-scale Farmers’ Forum (ESAFF) launches SEED GIST, a quarterly repository of seed literature.
A fun romp through potato history.
A fun romp through coffee history.
Hong Kong gets some rice seeds back from the IRRI genebank.
No doubt Iraq will get some seeds back from the ICARDA genebank soon.
Genebanks are only the beginning though.
Breeding teff in, wait for it, South Africa.
The possible tradeoffs of an environmentally friendly diet.
IIED on the value of agrobiodiversity. Includes an environmentally-friendly and/or nutritious diet.
Slow Food’s Plant a Seed Kit is all about agrobiodiversity and healthy diets. What, though, no teff?
WorldVeg knows all about seed kits, and safety duplication.
Gotta make sure those seeds are healthy, though. Here’s how CGIAR does it.

How to collect forestry seeds.
Whole bunch of new maize races collected in Colombia.
The Türkiye national genebank in the news. Lots of collecting there. Though maybe not as much as in this genebank in China.
But small communities need genebanks too. Here’s an example from Ghana. And another from India. And a final one from the Solomon Islands.
Need to use the stuff in genebanks though. Here’s how they do it in the UK. And in Bangladesh. And in Europe with the INCREASE project, which has just won a prize for citizen science. And in Taiwan. Sort of citizen science too.
Collecting apples in the UK. Funny, the canonical lost-British-apple story appears on the BBC in the autumn usually. Kinda citizen science.
Or we could do in situ conservation, as in this South African example… Just kidding, we all know it’s not either/or. Right? Probably a good idea to collect seeds is what I’m saying. Could even do it through citizen science.

Published on July 3, 2024