Luigi Guarino

November 29, 2007

Unconventional wine-making

Grapes? We don’t need no stinkin’ grapes. To make wine, that is.

November 28, 2007

Bringing back a wild relative

Aurochsen. Tarpans. Nazis. Wait, Nazis?

November 28, 2007

Hittite plague explained

Hittites “used infected sheep as biological weapon.”

November 27, 2007July 15, 2021

African Coffee Research Network endures

Having been in at the birth of the African Coffee Research Network fifteen years ago or whenever it was, it’s nice to see them making the mainstream African press. On the other hand, the list of things they are planning to do looks remarkably like the one we came up with at the early meetings. Fifteen years ago.

November 27, 2007

Sacred cows

India has lost half its 27 cattle breeds?

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