- An analysis of the transformative potential of major food system report recommendations. Most recommendations are nudges rather than transformative. But is that such a bad thing?
- Linking farm production diversity to household dietary diversity controlling market access and agricultural technology usage: evidence from Noakhali district, Bangladesh. Farm diversity is associated with dietary diversity, but less if markets and irrigation are to hand. Phew, that’s good.
- Leveraging millets for developing climate resilient agriculture. Never mind the yield, feel the stability. Plus they’re good for you.
- Exploring the legacy of Central European historical winter wheat landraces. Not great that breeding has narrowed the genepool. Will it happen to millets next?
- A European perspective on opportunities and demands for field-based crop phenotyping. Would be good to have more sites in Central Europe, no?
- Genetic dissection of seasonal vegetation index dynamics in maize through aerial based high-throughput phenotyping. 1752 accessions fall into 2 phenological groups. Do it in Europe next?
- Changes in soybean cultivars released over the past 50 years in southern Brazil. Yield has gone up, but protein concentration down. No word on stability. Nor overall diversity. Good and bad.
- The grain quality of wheat wild relatives in the evolutionary context. Breeders should focus on the timopheevii lineage if they want to do some good.
- Signatures of selection in recently domesticated macadamia. Further evidence for the one-step domestication of clonal crops.
- Emerging evidence of plant domestication as a landscape-level process. One-step is precisely how domestication did NOT happen for seed crops in the Neolithic though.
- Conservation and use of genetic resources of cacao (Theobroma cacao L.) by gene banks and nurseries in six Latin American countries. Not a great situation for such a financially important crop. Makes you think.
- Chloroplast phylogenomics in Camelina (Brassicaceae) reveals multiple origins of polyploid species and the maternal lineage of C. sativa. Such a lot of work, and they still don’t know in which landscape domestication took place.
- Making the invisible visible: tracing the origins of plants in West African cuisine through archaeobotanical and organic residue analysis. 3500 years of continuity in West African cooking investigated via lipid profiles on pottery. And fast forward…
Nibbles: Citrus genebank, Spice data, Canada genebank, Indian double, Jessica Hernandez
- Alphabetical list of the citrus material in the US genebank.
- Alphabetical list of spices.
- The Canadian Encyclopedia tackles the national genebank.
- Old tamarind and neem trees along a road get protection in India.
- And old crop varieties get revived, also in India.
- Interview with author of a book on Indigenous conservation science.
Nibbles: Seed saving, Ulu, Diet diversity, Azeri fruit/veg, Tomato breeding, Indigenous farming, AGRA-ecology
- Food security through seed saving in the African diaspora.
- Food security through breadfruit in Hawaii.
- Food security through the dietary diversity of women.
- Food security through preserving fruits and veggies in Azerbaijan.
- Food security through tomato wild relatives.
- Food security through Native American farming practices.
- Food security through agroecology.
Nibbles: Maize landraces, Indian plantain, Indigenous conservation, Slow Food, Design a tomato, Saffron in Vermont
- A Mexican entrepreneur and a Pawnee Keeper of the Seed try to save maize landraces in their different ways.
- Indian farmer tries to save plantain varieties.
- Indigenous conservation will save conservation.
- Alice Walters cannot save the food system. But why not let her try?
- None of the above of them would understand the concept of designing a perfect tomato.
- Saffron is the perfect spice.
Nibbles: GenResBridge, Food for All, CIAT genebank, Seed for the Future, Vavilov book, Seeing Pastoralism, S Sudan floods, Sustainable diets, Elon Musk, CePaCT, NZ genebank, Wild potato, Peyote
- Europe gets a genetic resources strategy at last. Rejoice.
- Book on how international organizations could, should, would transform agriculture.
- Meanwhile, in Cali…
- BBVA and El Celler de Can Roca collaborate on forgotten foods documentary, Seeds for the Future.
- A novel about Vavilov? Well, why not.
- Exhibition on pastoralism.
- Visual essay on floods in South Sudan.
- Why not throw money at food security though? I mean, just see above, right?
- Beyond the EAT-Lancet diet. S. Sudan unavailable for comment.
- The SPC genebank curator waxes lyrical.
- Not far away, New Zealand cryopreserves some of its native plants.
- The latest on the Four Corners potato. I hope it’s in cryo…
- …and that it doesn’t go the way of the peyote.