Genebanks

May 10, 2024May 13, 2024

Leaders of crop diversity conservation land World Food Prize

Great to see a couple of my former bosses recognized for their exceptional contributions to the conservation of crop diversity.

I like this quote from Geoff:

This is really a chance to get that message out and say, look, this relatively small amount of money is our insurance policy, our insurance policy that we’re going to be able to feed the world in 50 years.

April 30, 2024

Nibbles: Seed video, Kew video, Indonesian cassava, Crop maps, Neglected crops, KEPHIS lab, Turkish genebank, Nepal rice, Polynesian sugarcane, Ancient beer, Garlic basics

Nice video celebrating seeds.
Nice old video about Kew Gardens.
Tracing the origins of Indonesian cassava. No, it wasn’t introduced by Kew, but yes, colonialism was involved.
Latest data on where crops are grown. Including cassava.
Self Help Africa director turns on to neglected crops. Including cassava.
New lab in Kenya for spreading clean crops around. Including cassava?
Türkiye’s genebank in the news. No cassava.
Nepalese rice gets a Welsh upgrade.
Collecting sugarcane in French Polynesia to (eventually) support local booze industry.
Long live the ancient booze bandwagon.
Garlic 101.

April 9, 2024April 9, 2024

Brainfood: Food shift, Food footprint, Periodic Table of Food, Nutritious food, Diverse food, Food seed kits, Food meta-metrics

Food matters: Dietary shifts increase the feasibility of 1.5°C pathways in line with the Paris Agreement. Go flexitarian.
Biodiversity footprints of 151 popular dishes from around the world. Go flexitarian?
Periodic Table of Food Initiative for generating biomolecular knowledge of edible biodiversity. Unclear if flexitarians have the best molecules.
Environmentally protective diets may come with trade-offs for micronutrient adequacy. More sustainable may mean less nutritious. Flexitarians unavailable for comment.
Market engagement, crop diversity, dietary diversity, and food security: evidence from small-scale agricultural households in Uganda. Market access and crop diversification are both good for dietary diversity and food security. The ultimate flexitarianism.
Sustainability of one-time seed distributions: a long-term follow-up of vegetable seed kits in Tanzania. Now watch flexitarians demand an even playing field.
Developing holistic assessments of food and agricultural systems: A meta‑framework for metrics users. One framework to rule all of the above.

April 5, 2024April 8, 2024

Nibbles: Arboreta, IPES-Food, CGN, China genebank, Banana diversity, British hops, Coffee & deforestation

Arboreta have a community. And a newsletter. And a paper.
IPES-Food has a new website.
The Dutch genebank describes its users.
China has a back-up genebank.
Dan Saladino has a new article out, and it’s bananas.
The Brits freak out about their beer. As usual. And with limited justification.
The EU gets tough on coffee.

March 27, 2024

An award for conserving seeds

Did you have to develop new methods to clean the seed? Is it one of the longest cleaning or dormancy breaking processes? Was it the first time your species was germinated in a collection and unique germination methods had to be found?

The catch is that the “you” has to be a botanic garden, but I do like the idea of the Global Seed Conservation Challenge Awards. The above is just one of six different categories. A few more days only for nominations, so get cracking.