Luigi Guarino

January 19, 2008

Heal thyself

Medicinal plants in trouble.

January 17, 2008

More trouble in Naples

Brucillosis threatens mozzarella. Camorra unavailable for comment.

January 16, 2008

Feeding livestock

New Agriculturist focuses on livestock feed and fodder systems.

January 16, 2008October 10, 2017

Indian biodiversity information

India is to build a national biodiversity information system. Will it include agricultural biodiversity? Not clear from the short article in The Hindu, but I hope to be surprised. The National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources does have relevant databases (though not all online yet)…

January 16, 2008November 28, 2017

FAO developing forestry strategy

…and you can download the discussion document and comment on it here. Via ~~Non-Wood Forest Products Newsletter~~¹.

Fresh Nibbles

Frafra potato is having a moment: an indigenous West African tuber, adored locally and mostly ignored by science, out looking for its big commercial break.
Speaking of breakthroughs, this bus driver found his own, swapping the wheel for seed multiplication and turning five acres into a livelihood, proof that sometimes the missing link in a seed system is just someone willing to do the unglamorous middle bit well.
Which is, per Farming First, precisely Africa’s problem at scale: only 2.5% of smallholder seed in Sub-Saharan Africa comes from formal seed companies, so a few million more bus-driver-style multipliers wouldn’t hurt.
Meanwhile in the Balearics, the opposite direction of travel: the local seed bank is expanding to rescue tomatoes, onions and broad beans, and is looking for farmers willing to take them back.
Indigenous fruit trees in Malawi turn out to fight malnutrition and biodiversity loss at once. Happy coincidence?
Getting those trees into the ground well needs the same unglamorous groundwork as any good crop seed system: a Mongabay commentary argues that restoration campaigns skipping Indigenous and local seed knowledge are optimising for trees planted, not trees that survive.
And once you’ve got the saplings in the ground, you might want to monitor how they’re doing: enter Bruno, a pushcart rigged with mobile phones that can collect field data. And not just for breeders.
Finally, proof that not all genetic-resource hunting needs a genebank: Brussels brewers are getting people to comb the city for wild yeast, because the raw materials for a proper lambic turns is hanging around in urban trees.

Published on September 10, 2026