- Collecting tree seeds properly and respectfully is not easy.
- No word on how easy it is to collect tepary beans respectfully.
- Helping the USDA with their germplasm evaluations, on the other hand, is a breeze. Any tepary beans?
- Seed Savers Exchange makes conserving seeds look easy. Spoiler alert: it isn’t.
- It seems to be very easy to open new national genebanks in China.
- Farming is easier in Nepal with indigenous crops.
- Giant yams don’t look very easy to grow, but that’s not stopping some dedicated Indian women.
- It’s pretty easy — and fun — to visit the United Kingdom’s National Fruit Collection.
- Someone mention apples? Loammi Baldwin knew a thing or two about them.
- It’s going to get easier to identify plants. It says here.
- If you’re looking for interventions or policies to shift diets towards being healthier and more sustainable, your job just got a little easier.
- Likewise if you think the crises of biodiversity loss, water and food insecurity, health risks and climate change should be tackled together.
- Yes, even if you’re a business trying to manage your biodiversity risk you have a right to have it easier. Start by being respectful when climbing trees?
Brainfood: Food systems, Micronutrients, Animal-source foods, Dietary diversity, Opportunity crops, Traditional landscapes, Gastronomic landscapes, Opportunity crops, Biofortification, Fermentation
- Global and local perspectives on food security and food systems. Six experts have their say on how to transform food systems, and dietary diversity seems to be a common (though not a universal) theme. Let’s dig a little deeper into that.
- Global estimation of dietary micronutrient inadequacies: a modelling analysis. A lot of people could probably do with eating more fruits and vegetables, for example.
- Plant-based diets–impacts of consumption of little or no animal-source foods on human health. Some people could probably do with eating more animal-source foods, though. Well, that’s diversity too.
- The association between crop diversity and children’s dietary diversity: multi-scalar and cross-national comparisons. In some places, growing more diverse crops is associated with eating more diverse diets; in other places, not so much. Damn you, nuance!
- Revive and Thrive: Forgotten Crops for Resilient Food Systems. Fortunately, there are more advantages to growing more diverse crops than its possible positive effect on diet diversity…
- Why traditional rural landscapes are still important to our future. …yes indeed there are, especially if they are grown in diverse landscapes.
- Nurturing gastronomic landscapes for biosphere stewardship. The hallowed craft of cooking can help realize those advantages.
- NUS so fast: the social and ecological implications of a rapidly developing indigenous food economy in the Cape Town area. However, growing more diverse crops can have downsides, celebrity chefs etc. notwithstanding.
- Assessing realized genetic gains in biofortified cassava breeding for over a decade: Enhanced nutritional value and agronomic performance. Breeding crops for higher nutritional value comes at a yield price. Which presumably, in some places, for some people, may be worth paying, give all the uncertainties above?
- The future is fermented: Microbial biodiversity of fermented foods is a critical resource for food innovation and human health. Or, we could all ferment more. And maybe get drunk.
Nibbles: China genebanks, African genebanks, PNG genebank, Opportunity crops, Bananocalypse, IRRI genebank, African Runner Peanut, Australian genebank, Agrobiodiversity, Navajo agriculture, Wayuu agriculture, COPs
- With remarkable regularity, China announces some impressive genebank thing. Like a catalog for 105 tropical crop genebanks. But where is it?
- On the other hand, we probably don’t hear enough about African genebanks, so this piece is very welcome.
- Or about genebanks in Papua New Guinea, for that matter.
- Have we heard enough about “opportunity crops” yet? No, probably not.
- We will never stop hearing about the “bananocalypse,” I suspect.
- Or about the IRRI genebank from Mike Jackson. Not that I mind.
- The latest on the African Runner Peanut, about which we have blogged before. Several times. Not that I mind.
- I will never tire of hearing about genebanks getting loads of money.
- I will also never tire of hearing about win-win outcomes for biodiversity and food production.
- The Navajo know all about that. And the Wayuu people in Guajira, Colombia for that matter.
- We will soon all be tired of hearing about all the various COPs, but for now let’s see what the Dutch genebank and, let’s see who else we have, ok, sure, why not, ESG investors — what do they have to say?
Brainfood: EU landraces, EU GIs, Citizen fruit scientists, Nordic potatoes, Czech wheat, German wheat, Wild Brassica collecting, Chinese & European soybeans, Italian goats
- Landrace in situ (on-farm) conservation: European Union achievements. Lots of organizations and farmers are conserving landraces in Europe, in lots of ways, and pretty successfully, but the most sustainable way to do so would be to decrease barriers to their marketing, in particular in the context of organic agriculture.
- An assessment of the implementation of the EU policy for conservation varieties from 2009 to 2023 and its relationship to Geographical Indications. Few European GIs use conservation varieties (i.e. landraces), but this should, and probably will, change.
- New citizen science initiative enhances flowering onset predictions for fruit trees in Great Britain. Imagine doing this for European landraces.
- Genetic markers identify duplicates in Nordic potato collections. Ooops, some alleged landraces in European genebanks turn out to be old improved varieties.
- Curation of historical phenotypic wheat data from the Czech Genebank for research and breeding. You need data on all those landraces if people are going to use them. Citizen scientists might help, I guess.
- Trait-customized sampling of core collections from a winter wheat genebank collection supports association studies. But you need to use that data to create subsets first, and you can do that in lots of different ways, for different purposes: let the German genebank show you how.
- Collecting Mediterranean wild species of the Brassica oleracea group (Brassica sect. Brassica). Even in Europe some gap-filling collecting is still necessary.
- A comparison of Chinese wild and cultivar soybean with European soybean collections on genetic diversity by Genome-Wide Scan. Even breeders in the soybean center of diversity might find material from Europe’s genebanks useful.
- Can Sustainability and Biodiversity Conservation Save Native Goat Breeds? The Situation in Campania Region (Southern Italy) between History and Regional Policy Interventions. Conservation livestock breeds, anyone?
Nibbles: CWR double, Banana threats, Banana collecting, Rice breeding, Cassava breeding, SADC livestock genebank, Community seedbank, Sunflower mapping, Restoration
- Why we need crop wild relatives.
- No, really, we need crop wild relatives.
- The banana is in trouble.
- Which is why we need to conserve banana wild relatives and landraces.
- Lots of wild relatives are conserved in the IRRI genebank mentioned in this Guardian article on breeding low glycemic index and high protein rice. Some of them may even have been used in this work. May look that up one day.
- I doubt that IITA used wild relatives in breeding these high quality cassava varieties, but there’s always a first time, and there may even be some in its genebank. I should probably look but I don’t have time for this rabbit hole today.
- And livestock get conserved in genebanks too, though not as much as crops. I’m really not sure how many livestock wild relatives are in the world’s genebanks, but my guess is not many.
- Farmers conserve crop (and livestock) diversity too, of course. And sometimes even their wild relatives.
- It’s amazing what can be done from space to figure out what farmers are growing. This is an example of sunflower in Ukraine, but one day we’ll even be able to locate crop wild relatives, I’m sure.
- To finish off, a reminder that we need conserved seed of wild species for more than just breeding: restoration too.