Nibbles: CWR double, Banana threats, Banana collecting, Rice breeding, Cassava breeding, SADC livestock genebank, Community seedbank, Sunflower mapping, Restoration

  1. Why we need crop wild relatives.
  2. No, really, we need crop wild relatives.
  3. The banana is in trouble.
  4. Which is why we need to conserve banana wild relatives and landraces.
  5. Lots of wild relatives are conserved in the IRRI genebank mentioned in this Guardian article on breeding low glycemic index and high protein rice. Some of them may even have been used in this work. May look that up one day.
  6. I doubt that IITA used wild relatives in breeding these high quality cassava varieties, but there’s always a first time, and there may even be some in its genebank. I should probably look but I don’t have time for this rabbit hole today.
  7. And livestock get conserved in genebanks too, though not as much as crops. I’m really not sure how many livestock wild relatives are in the world’s genebanks, but my guess is not many.
  8. Farmers conserve crop (and livestock) diversity too, of course. And sometimes even their wild relatives.
  9. It’s amazing what can be done from space to figure out what farmers are growing. This is an example of sunflower in Ukraine, but one day we’ll even be able to locate crop wild relatives, I’m sure.
  10. To finish off, a reminder that we need conserved seed of wild species for more than just breeding: restoration too.

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

  1. Never thought I’d see the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Psychology Today, yet here we are.
  2. 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.
  3. How to make a genebank beautiful as well as sustainable.
  4. Australia has a rice genebank. For some reason.
  5. Bangladesh gets a new genebank. Could have sworn it already had one.
  6. Mutants need a genebank too.
  7. And inoculants.
  8. Community-level genebanks have their place too. Though probably not for mutants.
  9. As long as the farmers get a benefit, of course.
  10. Tricot is a good way of evaluating all that stuff in genebanks.
  11. But you should also genotype it.
  12. Why bother with all this? Andreas Volz has a nice explanation.
  13. Genetic diversity is all very good, but don’t forget to intercrop.
  14. Which includes agroforestry.
  15. For a more varied diet.
  16. And a better world economy.
  17. And a more sustainable food system.

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.

Brainfood: Ag research ROI, CGIAR & climate change, Crop species diversity, Training plant breeders, AI & plant breeding, Wheat breeding review, Wheat landraces, CIMMYT wheat breeding, Wheat D genome, Forages pre-breeding, Impact of new varieties, Two long-term barley experiment, High protein peas, Watermelon super-pangenome, Resynthesizing mustard, Consumer preference and breeding

Nibbles: Cropscapes, Ecuador cacao, Nigerian yams, Lima bean show, Mesopotamian cooking, Nepal seed banks, RNA integrity, China genebanks, Cryo comics, Greening

  1. The authors of book “Moving Crops and the Scales of History” have been awarded the Edelstein Prize 2024 for their work to “redefine historical inquiry based on the ‘cropscape’: the assemblage of people, places, creatures, technologies, and other elements that form around a crop.” Let’s see how many cropscapes we can come up with today.
  2. Here’s one. The Ecuador cacao genebank gets some much-needed help.
  3. Digging into Nigerian yams. And another.
  4. Castle Hex has a programme on Lima beans on 7-8 September. Sounds like fun.
  5. What if you can’t work out what the crops are, though? As in Mesopotamian recipe books, for example.
  6. The community seed banks of Nepal have a new website. Good news for those Nepalese cropscapes.
  7. A new project is testing RNA integrity number (RIN) as a metric of seed aging for a bunch of rare wild plants. One day maybe community seed banks will be using it.
  8. China has inventoried its agricultural germplasm. Will it be applying RIN next?
  9. The French are using bandes dessinées to teach about cryopreservation of animal genetic resources. Livestockscapes?
  10. Some drylands are getting greener and some people think that’s a problem. Always something.