- Blog post on the importance of the mugumu tree in Kikuyu culture.
- Alas, no sign of mugumu trees on the Kenyan farm visited by Bill Gates recently. But there were chickens, drought-tolerant maize and mobile phones…
- …and there may soon be crops engineered for nitrogen fixation too, if his foundation’s project with the University of Cambridge comes through.
- Speaking of maize, here’s a nice illustrated story of how the Organic Seed Alliance is helping farmers grow their own tortilla corn in the Pacific Northwest.
- To generalize and contextualize the above, read this USDA e-book on plant collections and climate change.
- Dr Giedre Motuzaite Matuzeviciute just got a grant to study broomcorn millet domestication and dispersal in Central Asia. There may be lessons for present-day adaptation to climate change, says the blurb.
- There are probably lessons about adaptation to climate change also to be had from Kew’s work on fonio and other traditional crops in Guinea.
- I wonder if Kew boffins are also working on bere, perry and other endangered British foods though.
- It’s always nice to see someone first learn about genebanks, and how they can help with the whole climate change thing.
- Meanwhile, in India, ICRISAT gets a stamp, which however doesn’t look very much like India or ICRISAT to me. Plenty of broomcorn millet in its genebank, by the way.
- Plenty of seeds from the ICRISAT genebank in Svalbard, as Asmund Asdal will no doubt point out on 10 February.
Nibbles: Fonio commercialization, Naked barley, Food books, Ag decarbonization, Nepal NUS, Millets & women, Crop diversity video, Maize god, Cherokee genebank, CWR, Japan genebank
- A Nigerian company is pushing fonio as the next global super-food. What could possibly go wrong?
- Personally, I think naked barley has a better chance.
- Humanities scholars recommend their favourite new books on food systems. I bet there will soon be one on fonio.
- Food and agriculture analyst at the Breakthrough Institute pens whole essay on how there should be public investment in moving agriculture from productivity gains to decarbonization without mentioning fonio.
- Well Nepal has orphan crops of its own and doesn’t give a fig for your fonio.
- Blogpost highlights the role of women in the cultivation and conservation of millets in Tamil Nadu.
- ISSD Africa video on the advantages of growing a diversity of crops, especially under climate change. Fonio, anyone?
- What does maize have to do with turtles? Gather round, children…
- The Cherokee Nation’s genebank is open for business. Maize available. No turtles.
- Long article on collecting, conserving and using crop wild relatives, including by Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank. Could fonio do with some diversity from its wild relatives? I suspect it’s not a huge priority, but maybe it will become one.
- It’s unclear how much diversity of orphan crops is in Japan’s high-tech genebank, but I bet it’s quite a bit. Fonio, I’m not so sure though. Maybe someone will tell me.
Brainfood: Coconut in vitro, Clean cryo, Chickpea & lentil collections, Genebank data history, Eurisco update, Mining genebank data, TIK, Sampling strategy, Drones, GIS, Mexican CWR, Post-2020 biodiversity framework
- Thiamine improves in vitro propagation of sweetpotato [Ipomoea batatas (L.) Lam.] – confirmed with a wide range of genotypes. Getting there, keep tweaking…
- Minimizing the deleterious effects of endophytes in plant shoot tip cryopreservation. Something else to tweak.
- Ex Situ Conservation of Plant Genetic Resources: An Overview of Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) and Lentil (Lens culinaris Medik.) Worldwide Collections. Thankfully not much in vitro and cryo involved. The main tweak necessary is to share more characterization data with breeders.
- Data, Duplication, and Decentralisation: Gene Bank Management in the 1980s and 1990s. Ah, but do calls for more data also reflect attempts to cut costs and build political bridges? And would that be so bad?
- EURISCO update 2023: the European Search Catalogue for Plant Genetic Resources, a pillar for documentation of genebank material. Arguably, Eurisco tries to do all of the above, and pretty well.
- Bioinformatic Extraction of Functional Genetic Diversity from Heterogeneous Germplasm Collections for Crop Improvement. You need fancy maths to make sense of all that data. And use it.
- Research Status and Trends of Agrobiodiversity and Traditional Knowledge Based on Bibliometric Analysis (1992–Mid-2022). Not much traditional knowledge in those databases, though, eh? That would be one hell of a tweak.
- Species-tailored sampling guidelines remain an efficient method to conserve genetic diversity ex situ: A study on threatened oaks. Meanwhile, some people are still trying to figure out the best way to tweak sampling strategies to add diversity to genebanks. Spoiler alert: you need data on individual species.
- Collecting critically endangered cliff plants using a drone-based sampling manipulator. You also need drones.
- Application of Geographical Information System for PGR Management. One thing you can do with all that data is map stuff. So at least the drones know where to go.
- Incorporating evolutionary and threat processes into crop wild relatives conservation. The only thing that’s missing from this is traditional knowledge. And maybe drones.
- Conserving species’ evolutionary potential and history: opportunities under the new post-2020 global biodiversity framework. All these data will allow us to measure how well we’re doing. And whether we can ask for cryotanks, drones, and better databases.
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.
Nibbles: Asian yams, Coconut survey, Belarus genebank, Jordan genebank, Tepary beans breeding, Dante’s wine
- Nice Twitter thread on Asian yams (and incidentally sweet potato and taro).
- Surveying and collecting coconuts in PNG. What will they do with those nuts?
- Belarus genebank gets a high-level visit. Can’t help wondering if the Ukraine genebank being in the news is behind this somehow.
- Jordan to get a(nother) genebank. Apparently.
- Tepary beans to get their 15 minutes of fame.
- Medieval Italian wine was biodynamic.