Nibbles: Citrus conservation, Amazon civilizations, Agricultural adaptation, Farming First, Communicating impact, Church forests, Food Forever Initiative

Brainfood: Arracacha diversity, Mediterranean diet, Asian sheep & goats, Alpine flax, Breeding efficiency, Models, Domestication & seed size, Palm uses, CC & production, Insecticide & diversity

Brainfood: Iron beans, Citrus evolution, Ethiopian co-ops, Farmer evaluation app, Exotic breeding, Cost of doing business, Plummy, Italian pears, Chinese cowpea, Breadfruit phylogeny, Seed collecting

Kew helping protect your morning joe

Remember a short blog post from seven years back saying how Ethiopia had just protected some wild coffee forests?

We Nibbled yesterday a UN press release saying that a Biosphere Reserve had been created in Ethiopia to protect wild coffee. But actually it turns out that it is no less than TWO reserves that have just been selected by UNESCO, Kafa and Yayu. Many thanks to Tadesse Woldemariam Gole for the tip.

No, I didn’t think so. But anyway, here’s the latest on that, courtesy of the coffee team at Kew.

In April 2015 we started the three year project ‘Mainstreaming biodiversity conservation and climate resilience at Yayu Biosphere Reserve (Ethiopia)’. In this project, poverty alleviation, biodiversity, and climate resilience, are inextricably linked.

The project has now been running for almost two years, and despite a few surprises, is achieving considerable success. Catch-up on our progress in the second part of this post, available in the coming months.

Previous experience in this sort of thing has been mixed, so I’m looking forward to hearing more. In the coming months.

Nibbles: Rice in Trinidad, Sweet potatoes in Ethiopia, EU crop diversity double, Sir Peter on the ginkgo, Forages, Brazilian peanuts, Seed moisture, Phenotyping double, Svalbard deposit, CATIE data, Herbarium double, Seed #resistance, Father of the apple, Agave congress