Luigi Guarino

April 14, 2026April 13, 2026

Yes, win-win-win diets are possible

Happy to second the sentiment expressed in this snippet from Jeremy’s latest newsletter. And there are so very many more equally interesting snippets to be found across the previous 299 issues, going back almost exactly 11 years. Congrats, Jeremy!

I heartily applaud scientists who take the trouble to create a more accessible version of their research results, and not only because it saves me the effort. I’m very happy, then, to refer you to two versions from two of the authors of Strategies for achieving healthy, sustainable, and equitable dietary transitions, recently published in Science.

The paper “connects the behaviors of consumers, producers, and the midstream actors who influence both supply and demand. It then proposes solutions based on syntheses of evidence across major intervention domains”.

Jess Fanzo and Marc Bellemare — both no stranger to the podcast — have made it easier for the rest of us to understand the complexities and difficulties involved.

April 13, 2026

Brainfood: Diversification edition

Agrobiodiversity for Climate Resilience: A Systematic Review of Yield Stability, Pest Regulation, and Nutrition Outcomes. “…agrobiodiversity emerges as a no-regrets adaptation strategy that strengthens resilience, sustains productivity, and supports nutrition, while creating co-benefits for ecosystems and livelihoods.”
Global impacts of increased undervalued crop production on environmental, economic, and nutrient outcomes. It’s even good for emissions. No regrets indeed. But who’s going to do drive all this diversification?
Impact of a homegardening intervention on crop diversity: results from a cluster-randomized trial in Bangladesh. Homegardeners maybe?
National genebanks as agents of change for supporting farmers’ crop diversification. Oh, I know who else can help.
Expanding the genetic diversity of chickpeas from the Ukrainian genebank to new agricultural systems. Even in a war zone.
The genetic landscape of Pacific taro: diversity, population structure, and strategic germplasm management. Even in paradise.
Influences of territorial conflicts on local crop diversity in a campesino community in the Colombian Caribbean. Because war is bad for agrobiodiversity. No word on the effect of paradise.
Reviewing assumptions around the giant maize Jala landrace locally known as maíz de húmedo: the importance of local knowledge for the in situ conservation of agrobiodiversity. On top of everything, agrobiodiversity can even be iconic.

April 2, 2026March 31, 2026

Nibbles: Crop mapping, Climate change impacts, Rice cheese, Andean blueberry, Rare apples, Hungarian genebank, Old seed collection

AI doesn’t recognize tropical agriculture very well.
So presumably it can’t easily be used in assessing climate change impacts in agricultural heritage systems? FAO has some ideas on how to do it.
Maybe rice heritage systems can be used to make cheese.
I bet Andean blueberry (Vaccinium floribundum) goes great with rice cheese.
But if not, heritage apples will probably do.
The Hungarian genebank is hoping to inject heritage grains into non-heritage agricultural systems. AI and FAO unavailable for comment.
Maybe AI can help with the mystery of this old seed collection at the Natural History Museum, London.

March 30, 2026March 31, 2026

JSTOR in a pickle with Jeremy

From Jeremy’s latest newsletter. To which of course you should subscribe. You’ll see he mentions Charles Darwin right up front, which allows me to link to a new course based on teaching materials created by Darwin’s Cambridge menor, Prof. John Stevens Henslow.

Plant of the Month from JSTOR is the cucumber. As usual for this series, there’s a ton of fascinating information and links, from the compilation of cats confronted by cucumbers to their inspiration of one of Charles Darwin’s lesser-known books.

Why, though, cool as a cucumber? In some sense it seems obvious that the cucumber is simply well-flavoured wateriness most available during summer’s heat. Could it, really, have prevented sweating? And while people swear by the beneficial effects of a good, thick slice on the eyes as a rejuvenator, reducer of puffiness, etc., etc., there doesn’t seem to be any good evidence that a cucumber is better than, say, a used tea bag or wet cotton wool. JSTOR doesn’t even mention the practice.

Allow me, please, a quibble. JSTOR’s caption for its first image … is “Two dill cucumbers. Watercolour painting by a Chinese artist”. Fair enough, that is how it is labelled at its source. But surely a cucumber on the vine cannot be a dill cucumber until it has been brined and fermented, with dill.

And if that’s not confusing enough, try a deep dive into cucurbit names, an episode from 2016.

March 30, 2026March 31, 2026

Brainfood: Rice breeding, Cowpea diversity, Sorghum pangenome, Faba bean genome, Banana wild relative, Cassava breeding, Seed laws, Microbiome double

Linking genetic gains to food security outcomes: An assessment of IRRI’S rice breeding efforts in the Philippines and Indonesia. Plant breeding is a marathon, not a sprint.
Scaling up orphan crop research: genebank genetics highlight geographic structure in cultivated cowpea from 10 617 global accessions. Fortunately, there are “opportunity crops” like cowpea, and their genebank collections are being sequenced to help breeders.
A sorghum pangenome reference improves global crop trait discovery. A pangenome also helps with that marathon, like carb loading.
Allelic variation at a single locus distinguishes spring and winter faba beans. Even a better reference genome can help.
Going wild in banana breeding enables Fusarium-resistant hybrids with improved fruit quality. Wild relatives are like those drinks stations.
Genetic diversity assessment of hydrogen cyanide, total carotenoid content, and dry matter content in biofortified cassava using trait-linked SNP markers. Even next-door breeding programmes can be very different, and thus help each other across the finish line.
Cross-scale chronological analysis of Southeast Asia’s seed regulations and emerging challenges for seed commons. Seed regulations don’t always help breeders on their marathon.
Impacts of climate extremes on plant pathogens, microbiomes and plant health. Breeders may need some help from the microbiome on that run.
Dominance and natural suppression of bacterial plant pathogens across global soils. But the soil microbiome will have troubles of its own.