Brainfood: Food systems & biodiversity, Tree diversity, Cereal micronutrients, African crops in America, Coffee vulnerability, Coffee fungus, Wildrice, Wild coriander, Wild apple genebank, Laperrine’s olive, Maize landraces, Goat domestication, Honey bee cryo

Nibbles: Small farms, DivSeek, Wheat gene atlas, Tannin synthesis, Pest/diseases, Food/feed, Korean vault

  1. Small farms are not just beautiful. Yes, the original paper was in Brainfood back in March, but this website seems to be new.
  2. DivSeek has a new strategic plan to “improve the generation and sharing of information about global plant genetic resources”: accelerate, add value, educate. Small farms unavailable for comment.
  3. Speaking of sharing information on global PGR, we need to do that for wheat genes, wheat gene scientists say.
  4. Probably for tannins too, come to think of it.
  5. FAO says climate change will make pests and diseases worse.
  6. FAO also says that livestock are not as bad as many people think.
  7. The sincerest for of flattery on display in South Korea.

A taste of coffee to come

Seems like it’s probably worth recapping the whole new-species-will-save-your-morning-coffee-from-climate-change story that’s been going around.

It all started last year with a paper describing the rediscovery in the wilds of Sierra Leone of a species of coffee that used to be very well liked but then fell out of commercial favour due to low yields. It’s called Coffea stenophylla ((More on this database of wild coffee here. There is only one entry for C. stenophylla in Genesys, from CATIE, but there are some doubts about it.)) and of course Jeremy did a podcast about it, interviewing one of the authors of said paper, the very engaging Prof. Jeremy Haggar.

Fast forward a year and we now have a follow-up paper assessing the taste of coffee made from beans of C. stenophylla from that (very tiny, alas) wild population in Sierra Leone and also from a (more substantial) CIRAD research stand in La Reunion. And guess what? It’s really good. So of course Jeremy went back to Prof. Haggar for another nice chat.

C. stenophylla grows in hot and humid lowlands, so it’s a little more ready for climate change than your average arabica. ((There’s also a video now.)) Still, the yield issue is presumably still there, and no doubt other problems will arise, as they always do. But I’m keeping my fingers crossed, because I really want to taste the stuff — and boost Sierra Leonean business along the way.

Oh and of course we’ll have to revise the global coffee diversity conservation strategy now…