- From biomedical to politico-economic crisis: the food system in times of Covid-19. How to build back better? Food sovereignty, peasant agriculture, territorial markets and agroecology.
- Food for thought: The underutilized potential of tropical tree‐sourced foods for 21st century sustainable food systems. How to realize that potential? Lots of ideas here, including: “Investment in the conservation of tree genetic resources and the development of formal seed delivery systems.”
- Priorities, challenges and opportunities for supplying tree genetic resources. Invest in what bits of conservation and seed delivery systems, though? Read this and find out.
- Genetic threats to the Forest Giants of the Amazon: Habitat degradation effects on the socio‐economically important Brazil nut tree (Bertholletia excelsa). After reading the above, maybe apply to this?
- From texts to enacting practices: defining fair and equitable research principles for plant genetic resources in West Africa. How to make sure everyone understands words the same way? Theater. Of course, darling.
- Safeguarding a global seed heritage from Syria to Svalbard. It took a (global) village.
- Focused Identification of Germplasm Strategy (FIGS): Polishing a rough diamond. Natural selection is not enough. Links both to above and below, but you knew that.
- Göte Turesson’s research legacy to Hereditas: from the ecotype concept in plants to the analysis of landraces’ diversity in crops. “Understanding … landrace diversification assists also on breeding new cultivars sustainably since it provides insights regarding crop evolution across stress-prone environments, and for finding genebank accessions and other germplasm whose allelic diversity may be missing in today’s breeding programs.”
- Yield, yield stability and farmers’ preferences of evolutionary populations of bread wheat: A dynamic solution to climate change. Maybe the problem is with today’s breeding programs?
- What Do We Really Know About Adaptation at Range Edges? Peripherality does not predict degree of adaptation.
- The Central Asiatic region of cultivated plants. 800 species, no less.
- Biodiversity enhances the multitrophic control of arthropod herbivory. Plants lose less biomass to arthropods in mixtures, as compared to monocultures.
- Evolutionary origins of taro (Colocasia esculenta) in Southeast Asia. Not PNG after all, according to chloroplast DNA.
- Abattoirs – A Hidden Centre for Livestock Genetic Resources Loss in Nigeria. Because they slaughter pregnant animals. Did not see that one coming, frankly.
- More than fish: Policy coherence and benefit sharing as necessary conditions for equitable aquaculture development. Regional policies need to be domesticated.
Nibbles: MSB birthday, Ethiopia impact, Coffee threats, African greens
- It’s 20 years of the Millennium Seed Bank. Happy birthday!
- CGIAR summarizes 20 years of impact in Ethiopia.
- In 20 years, half of Africa’s coffee land could be gone. Well, 30, but I need to keep this streak going.
- Must have been about 20 years ago that systematic research on African indigenous vegetables really took off, and now look.
Nibbles: F2F, Jute, IITA, ICARDA, ILRI, Grazing
- USDA throws shade on EU’s Farm to Fork strategy. I see trouble in its future.
- Turns out jute has a future.
- Is CRISPR the banana’s future?
- How Svalbard gave ICARDA’s genebank a future.
- Ensuring the future of Ethiopia’s livestock through forage seeds.
- The future of Europe’s meadows is livestock. No word on forage seed or Farm to Fork.
Diversify your landscapes redux
I originally published this post on 29 July, but then Dr Baudron pointed to two additional papers on Twitter, and then later to another one, so I’m re-upping, for the second time, with a sixth bullet point.
There’s a nice series of papers on the benefits of diverse landscapes in Ethiopia from Frédéric Baudron of CIMMYT and others.
Just in case this tweet disappears, or whatever, here are the links:
- Wheat yields and zinc content are higher closer to forests because of elevated organic matter in the soil.
- Diets are also more diverse nearer forests.
- Livestock (but not crop) productivity is higher nearer forests, and smallholder systems generally more sustainable.
- Bird diversity benefits from tree cover too, and that provides important ecosystem services to smallholders.
- Even limited reforestation in the surrounding landscape is associated with higher wheat yields in simulations, and you can potentially measure it from space.
- “More people, more trees.”
Domesticating the podcast
Want to review the state of knowledge on domestication of chickens, sheep and cattle in less than half an hour? Yes? Well then, Jeremy has a podcast for you. It’s an interview with Olivier Hanotte, who teaches livestock genetics at the University of Nottingham.
The beautiful chicken pic is from a book by photographers Moreno Monti and Matteo Tranchellini.
There’s also a stunning book on the diversity of African cattle from ILRI, where Dr Hanotte also has a position.