- Edible Memory for free, for a month. Heirloom tomatoes and more.
- Speaking of heirloom tomatoes… Tomatomania! The podcast. And the website.
- The ritual autumn BBC story on heirloom apples. Anyone for applemania?
- Would you settle for pearmania? Perrymania actually.
- Mania or no, crops have taken a hit this year.
- The truth behind some buzzwords in food systems discourse from IPES-Food. Spoiler alert: agroecologymania.
- Some cool breadfruit etc. jobs going in Hawaii at the National Tropical Botanical Garden.
- Kent Nnadozie has a pretty cool job at the Plant Treaty, here’s an interview with him on the occasion of World Food Day.
Nibbles: Tree planting, Restoration genebanks, Breadfruit Summit, Rice diversity demand, Irish Seed Savers, Jordan bread, Peanut recipes
- Rules for tree planting.
- Where those trees will have to come from: thousands of seed banks.
- Not if the tree is breadfruit, but that’s ok, there’s other ways to conserve the stuff.
- The impact of a single seed bank on rice improvement measured.
- The impact of Irish seed banks recognized.
- No need for genebanks to save heirloom wheats in Jordan.
- Lost opportunity to mention peanut genebanks, but that’s ok there’s other ways to conserve the stuff.
Brainfood: Opuntia breeding, Teosinte genes, Sugarcane breeding, Proso diversity, Watermelon diversity, Wheat pre-breeding, Sorghum wild relatives, Grasspea evaluation, Banana domestication, Pea pan-genome, Bambara diversity
- Needs and strategies for breeding and sustainable use of genetic resources in Opuntia. Surely there are molecular markers for spinelessness by now?
- Teosinte confers specific alleles and yield potential to maize improvement. There are 71 QTLs associated with 24 differential traits between maize and teosinte.
- A short review on sugarcane: its domestication, molecular manipulations and future perspectives. Forget sugar or fuel, the future is vaccine production.
- SNP discovery in proso millet (Panicum miliaceum L.) using low-pass genome sequencing. Ok, but why are the South Asian accessions so different from everything else?
- Meta-analysis of qualitative and quantitative trait variation in sweet watermelon and citron watermelon genetic resources. Rob citron to pay sweet watermelon.
- Genomics-informed prebreeding unlocks the diversity in genebanks for wheat improvement. How I learned to stop worrying and love non-adapted germplasm.
- Wild Sorghum as a Promising Resource for Crop Improvement. Oooh, I like the idea of de novo domestication of Australian wild sorghum species.
- Disentangling the Genetic Diversity of Grass Pea Germplasm Grown under Lowland and Highland Conditions. Always good to have multi-locational trial data, even when n=2.
- Hybridization, missing wild ancestors and the domestication of cultivated diploid bananas. Let the search for the 3 unknown wild ancestors begin!
- Improved pea reference genome and pan-genome highlight genomic features and evolutionary characteristics. If only Mendel had worked on wild peas too.
- Genetic diversity and population structure analyses of South African Bambara groundnut (Vigna subterranea [L.] Verdc) collections using SNP markers. Two heterotic groups to play around with.
Nibbles: Ghana genebank, Indian crop breeding, Bhutan genebank, Grafting, Vielfalt auf Feldern und Tellern
- Genebank pushes Bambara groundnut in Ghana.
- Acharya NG Ranga Agricultural University develops new varieties, deposits them in Indian genebank.
- Bhutan’s national genebank explains its work.
- Grafting fruit trees in India to save them.
- All of the above contribute to SDG 2.5.
- All of the above are needed to get out of the food and climate crises. How? Crop Trust executive directors explains for German speakers.
Nibbles: Old olive, Silphion, Heirloom watermelon, Calabrian chili, ICARDA genebank, Jamaica genebank, Tamil community seedbank, Forestry seeds
- Really old olive tree in the gardens of the mosque-cathedral of Cordoba is a lost variety.
- Long extinct medicinal spice plant not extinct after all?
- The next nearly extinct heirloom on our list is a watermelon from Virginia. Who knows, it may originally have been grown in Cordoba or Cyrenaica…
- And moving in the opposite direction, a really hot Calabrian chili pepper beats the heat.
- The ICARDA genebank is trying to find stuff that will beat the heat too.
- Jamaica is looking to beat the heat by establishing some new genebanks.
- Tamil Nadu going the community seedbank route, and why not? Jamaica please take note.
- An alliance of forestry outfits is pushing for a global seedbank infrastructure to support woodland restoration. Nothing if not ambitious. And much needed.