- Let’s say we wanted to transition to a more local and low-input production system in Europe. What seeds would we need and where would we get them from? The Greens/EFA in the European Parliament have some ideas.
- IITA is pushing the yam bean in Nigeria. Europe next?
- More on that new Australian wild tomato from a couple of years back. With audio goodness.
- The largest ever einkorn variety comparison trial makes the German news. Well, makes a press release anyway. Yam bean next?
- Another continent, another ancient grain: sorghum in the US. Yam bean next?
- The Ethiopia Grass project aims to improve livestock production, food crop yields AND soil quality. The trifecta!
- Nice infographics displaying dodgy data on the most common ingredients in different cuisines. Yam bean and einkorn nowhere to be seen.
- Cool community-created online catalogue of British apples. Looking forward to the yam bean one.
- It was drought that did for the Hittites, not lack of yam beans. Sea Peoples unavailable for comment.
- It was Yersinia pestis from Issyk-Kul that nearly did for Europe in the Middle Ages. Yes, you can study the genetic diversity of ancient deadly bugs and well as that of crops like yam bean and einkorn.
Brainfood: NbS, Intercropping, Sparing, Mixtures, Intensification, Shifting cultivation, Mexican wild foods, Chinese NUS, Andean crops, South African indigenous foods, Uganda community seedbanks
- Nature-Based Solutions and Agroecology: Business as Usual or an Opportunity for Transformative Change? Nature-based solutions need to be diversity-based. Let’s look at some example, shall we? Buckle up…
- The productive performance of intercropping. Meta-analysis shows intercropping leads to more land sparing and more protein compared to monoculture.
- Sparing or expanding? The effects of agricultural yields on farm expansion and deforestation in the tropics. Ouch, increasing yield results more often in higher deforestation than lower. If only they had gone for intercropping…
- Crop mixtures outperform rotations and landscape mosaics in regulation of two fungal wheat pathogens: a simulation study. …or crop mixtures.
- Intensified rice production negatively impacts plant biodiversity, diet, lifestyle and quality of life: transdisciplinary and gendered research in the Middle Senegal River Valley. And just to be clear, agricultural expansion can be bad for both farmers and the environment.
- Drivers and consequences of archetypical shifting cultivation transitions. Being able to charge rent is the main driver of the move away from shifting cultivation, but the environmental results depend on what system replaces it.
- Contribution of the biodiversity of edible plants to the diet and nutritional status of women in a Zapotec communities of the Sierra Norte, Oaxaca, Mexico. It’s the older, less educated housewives that are more nature-based, and all the better for it.
- Six Underutilized Grain Crops for Food and Nutrition in China. That would be barley, buckwheat, broomcorn millet, foxtail millet, oat, and sorghum, which would certainly make a nature-based breakfast of champions.
- Traditional crops and climate change adaptation: insights from the Andean agricultural sector. Growing traditional crops in the Andes may be less profitable, but it is more resilient to climate change. Unclear which of the two options is more nature-based, though. And has anyone told China?
- Opportunities and Challenges of Indigenous Food Plant Farmers in Integrating into Agri-Food Value Chains in Cape Town. To take advantage of nature-based solutions in South Africa, you have to know about local nature.
- Community Seedbanks in Uganda: Fostering Access to Genetic Diversity and Its Conservation. More research is needed to figure out how community seedbanks can be at their nature-based best.
Nibbles: Mugumu, Gates, Fixation, OSA, USDA, Panicum, Digitaria, Britgrub, Wheat, ICRISAT, Svalbard
- Blog post on the importance of the mugumu tree in Kikuyu culture.
- Alas, no sign of mugumu trees on the Kenyan farm visited by Bill Gates recently. But there were chickens, drought-tolerant maize and mobile phones…
- …and there may soon be crops engineered for nitrogen fixation too, if his foundation’s project with the University of Cambridge comes through.
- Speaking of maize, here’s a nice illustrated story of how the Organic Seed Alliance is helping farmers grow their own tortilla corn in the Pacific Northwest.
- To generalize and contextualize the above, read this USDA e-book on plant collections and climate change.
- Dr Giedre Motuzaite Matuzeviciute just got a grant to study broomcorn millet domestication and dispersal in Central Asia. There may be lessons for present-day adaptation to climate change, says the blurb.
- There are probably lessons about adaptation to climate change also to be had from Kew’s work on fonio and other traditional crops in Guinea.
- I wonder if Kew boffins are also working on bere, perry and other endangered British foods though.
- It’s always nice to see someone first learn about genebanks, and how they can help with the whole climate change thing.
- Meanwhile, in India, ICRISAT gets a stamp, which however doesn’t look very much like India or ICRISAT to me. Plenty of broomcorn millet in its genebank, by the way.
- Plenty of seeds from the ICRISAT genebank in Svalbard, as Asmund Asdal will no doubt point out on 10 February.
Nibbles: Fonio commercialization, Naked barley, Food books, Ag decarbonization, Nepal NUS, Millets & women, Crop diversity video, Maize god, Cherokee genebank, CWR, Japan genebank
- A Nigerian company is pushing fonio as the next global super-food. What could possibly go wrong?
- Personally, I think naked barley has a better chance.
- Humanities scholars recommend their favourite new books on food systems. I bet there will soon be one on fonio.
- Food and agriculture analyst at the Breakthrough Institute pens whole essay on how there should be public investment in moving agriculture from productivity gains to decarbonization without mentioning fonio.
- Well Nepal has orphan crops of its own and doesn’t give a fig for your fonio.
- Blogpost highlights the role of women in the cultivation and conservation of millets in Tamil Nadu.
- ISSD Africa video on the advantages of growing a diversity of crops, especially under climate change. Fonio, anyone?
- What does maize have to do with turtles? Gather round, children…
- The Cherokee Nation’s genebank is open for business. Maize available. No turtles.
- Long article on collecting, conserving and using crop wild relatives, including by Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank. Could fonio do with some diversity from its wild relatives? I suspect it’s not a huge priority, but maybe it will become one.
- It’s unclear how much diversity of orphan crops is in Japan’s high-tech genebank, but I bet it’s quite a bit. Fonio, I’m not so sure though. Maybe someone will tell me.
Brainfood: Breeding edition
- Climate change may outpace current wheat breeding yield improvements in North America. Breeders need to try harder, at least for spring wheat.
- Large-scale genotyping and phenotyping of a worldwide winter wheat genebank for its use in pre-breeding. But winter wheat could do with some help too, and genebanks are there for you, breeders.
- Exotic alleles contribute to heat tolerance in wheat under field conditions. Maybe wild relatives are the answer?
- Agronomic assessment of two populations of intermediate wheatgrass—Kernza® (Thinopyrum intermedium) in temperate South America. Even really, really wild, and perennial, relatives.
- Sustained productivity and agronomic potential of perennial rice. Maybe perennial wheat breeders can learn from perennial rice breeders.
- CGIAR Barley Breeding Toolbox: A diversity panel to facilitate breeding and genomic research in the developing world. Good to see barley is not being left behind. Perennial barley next, anyone?
- Developing drought-smart, ready-to-grow future crops. It’s not like breeders have no idea about what to do and how to do it…
- Molecular evidence for adaptive evolution of drought tolerance in wild cereals. …and there’s diversity out there in the wild relatives to play with. Even without getting into the weird perennial stuff.
- Impact of CGIAR maize germplasm in Sub-Saharan Africa. So let’s be optimistic, there are success stories. Although, cripes, I’d like to see perennial maize.
- Genomic prediction for the Germplasm Enhancement of Maize project. Which is not to say there’s no room for improvement too.
- Maize plants and the brace roots that support them. Yeah, like for example how many of these fancy CGIAR and GEM maize varieties have brace roots?
- Retrospective study in US commercial sorghum breeding: I. Genetic gain in relation to relative maturity. US breeders have been really successful for sorghum too, though maybe not successful enough.
- Evaluation of a Subset of Ethiopia Sorghum Collection Germplasm from the National Genetic Resources Program of the United States Department of Agriculture for Anthracnose Resistance. And that success may be spilling over to Ethiopia. Well I’d like to think so anyway, or the whole conceit of this Brainfood will go up in smoke.
- Genomics-based assembly of a sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench core collection in the Uganda national genebank as a genetic resource for sustainable sorghum breeding. And maybe Uganda too? Yes, I’m doubling down.
- GridScore: a tool for accurate, cross-platform phenotypic data collection and visualization. All these breeders need to store and manage their data, of course, and here’s a way to do that.
- The Impact of N.I. Vavilov on the Conservation and Use of Plant Genetic Resources in Scandinavia: A Review. Arguably all of the above is the result of the sort of international collaboration that Vavilov exemplified, perhaps even pioneered?