Luigi Guarino

September 24, 2024September 25, 2024

The outline of a deal for a better MLS?

Where are we with the whole enhancing the functioning of the Plant Treaty’s Multilateral System thing? I’m glad you asked. You’ll remember that…

[h]istorically, parties have been divided between creating a subscription-only system of payment upon registration, and maintaining a single-access option along the lines of the benefit-sharing payments under the current SMTA.

Well, at a meeting of the relevant committee last week in Rome there was a proposal from the co-chairs for a…

…single subscription mechanism with two alternative triggers for mandatory monetary benefit-sharing: an early payment upon registration or a deferred payment upon commercialization of a product incorporating material from the MLS.

Much remains to be done, but this is being seen as a bit of a “procedural breakthrough.” Fingers crossed.

September 23, 2024September 24, 2024

Brainfood: Diverse ecologists, Wild vs cultivated, Ecosystem services, Indigenous people, Mixtures, On-farm trees, Monitoring protected areas, Social media & protected areas, Wild harvesting, Land sparing vs sharing, Agroecology & plant health, Wild vs cultivated

On the importance of diversity in ecological research. Diversity of the research teams, that is. This should apply to everything that follows.
Adapting wild biodiversity conservation approaches to conserve agrobiodiversity. The main gap seem to be in the area of “payment for system services.” Agrobiodiversity could learn from biodiversity there.
The Role of Crop, Livestock, and Farmed Aquatic Intraspecific Diversity in Maintaining Ecosystem Services. And there’s a lot to pay for, apparently.
No basis for claim that 80% of biodiversity is found in Indigenous territories. There are better numbers for the undoubted (but alas still unrewarded) importance of Indigenous people for biodiversity conservation.
Plant diversity decreases greenhouse gas emissions by increasing soil and plant carbon storage in terrestrial ecosystems. Huge meta-analysis says plant mixtures are better than monocultures for C storage. Maybe someone should pay for that?
Food-sourcing from on-farm trees mediates positive relationships between tree cover and dietary quality in Malawi. And some of those trees will be wild.
Delivering Systematic and Repeatable Area-Based Conservation Assessments: From Global to Local Scales. Actually, the Digital Observatory for Protected Areas (DOPA) could also usefully be applied to agricultural biodiversity.
Applying deep learning on social media to investigate cultural ecosystem services in protected areas worldwide. Well, of course, it was only a matter of time. And the above comment also applies.
Does long-term harvesting impact genetic diversity and population genetic structure? A study of Indian gooseberry (Phyllanthus emblica) in the Central Western Ghats region in India. AI will only get you so far. But it would be interesting to see if AI could have predicted these results. More training dataset needed, I suspect.
Agrobiodiversity conservation enables sustainable and equitable land sparing. Intensifying agriculture can be good for land sparing, but its sustainability depends on land sharing. Nice way to escape the dichotomy.
Towards an agroecological approach to crop health: reducing pest incidence through synergies between plant diversity and soil microbial ecology. I guess this is an example of the above.
Are agricultural commodity production systems at risk from local biodiversity loss? Have you not been listening?

September 17, 2024September 16, 2024

Nibbles: Svalbard Global Seed Vault, CePaCT genebank, CIAT genebank, Australia rice genebank, Bangladesh genebank, Maize mutants garden, Inoculants genebank, Millets community seedbank, Payments for Agrobiodiversity Conservation Services, Triadic Comparison of Technology Options, Crop diversity, Intercropping, Agroforestry, Diet diversity, World economy, Sustainable food

Never thought I’d see the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Psychology Today, yet here we are.
The Pacific’s regional genebank is set for more work on lesser-known crops. Too bad most of them won’t be able to go to Svalbard.
How to make a genebank beautiful as well as sustainable.
Australia has a rice genebank. For some reason.
Bangladesh gets a new genebank. Could have sworn it already had one.
Mutants need a genebank too.
And inoculants.
Community-level genebanks have their place too. Though probably not for mutants.
As long as the farmers get a benefit, of course.
Tricot is a good way of evaluating all that stuff in genebanks.
But you should also genotype it.
Why bother with all this? Andreas Volz has a nice explanation.
Genetic diversity is all very good, but don’t forget to intercrop.
Which includes agroforestry.
For a more varied diet.
And a better world economy.
And a more sustainable food system.

September 17, 2024September 17, 2024

The olive’s second act?

Is Xylella — cause of the olive plague that has been stalking southern Europe for a decade — a blessing in disguise for the Salento? Jeremy asks the hard questions in his latest Eat This Podcast. Spoiler alert: Silvestro Silvestori thinks it might just be:

…at the heart of Xylella and the Salento is an identity crisis, that we’re all the children of farmers, we’re all farmers ourselves. And for most people, that’s not the case any longer. And there’s not a lot of industry left here as far as farming. So I think first we have to look at ourselves in the mirror and say, what are we?

Fascinating insights throughout, so listen to the whole thing. And wonder whether this will help.

September 16, 2024

Brainfood: Pacific plant use, Rapa Nui crops, E African crops, Cotton domestication, Fertile Crescent Neolithic, Dutch Neolithic, S Italy crops, Rice domestication, Maize domestication

Human dispersal and plant processing in the Pacific 55 000–50 000 years ago. There was more to the peopling of the Pacific than seafaring.
Identification of breadfruit (Artocarpus altilis) and South American crops introduced during early settlement of Rapa Nui (Easter Island), as revealed through starch analysis. Though seafaring took these people all the way to South America, it sees.
Early agriculture and crop transitions at Kakapel Rockshelter in the Lake Victoria region of eastern Africa. A bit like Rapa Nui, Lake Victoria got crops from both west and east over time.
Cotton and post-Neolithic investment agriculture in tropical Asia and Africa, with two routes to West Africa. Funny they didn’t find cotton at the Lake Victoria site.
Drawing diffusion patterns of Neolithic agriculture in Anatolia. Itinerant expert harvesters spread agriculture into Anatolia. Maybe around Africa too, who knows.
Early animal management in northern Europe: multi-proxy evidence from Swifterbant, the Netherlands. Early farmers in northern Europe managed separate herds of cattle in different ways alongside crops. What, itinerant expert livestock herders too?
Introduction, spread and selective breeding of crops: new archaeobotanical data from southern Italy in the early Middle Ages. Sicily is a bit like Rapa Nui and Lake Victoria.
Rice’s trajectory from wild to domesticated in East Asia. Rice domestication pushed back to about the same time as the Fertile Crescent. No word on the role of expert harvesters.
Archaeological findings show the extent of primitive characteristics of maize in South America. Maize arrived in lowland South America in a pre-domesticated state, and stayed like that for a long time. That’s a long way for expert harvesters to go.