Melaku Worede speaks

And this is what the veteran crop conservationist says:

Gene banks like the SADC gene bank, the Svalbard gene bank, and many others, focus only on collecting and preserving. How can you think you are conserving diversity when the very source upon which the seeds depend is not included? You can capture only so much, and in 100 years it will be useless because the planet will have changed. Perhaps you will be able to incorporate some genetic material into varieties and release them, but who is going to benefit from that? That is the big question.

I know what he means. You need to conserve the process, as well as the product. But I have another big question. If the world — read the climate — is changing as fast as many now fear, don’t you need the insurance policy that genebanks provide all the more?

Nibbles: Drugs, Horticulture, Nutritional composition, Health, Rice, Coconut

Bush wild tomatoes

Someone called James Sultana emailed us to ask: “Where can get some bush wild tomatoes”.

I was forced to reply in pedant mode:

Could you be a little bit more specific? What do you mean by a “bush
wild tomato”? A wild relative of the tomato? Or some other species
(maybe Australian?) that goes by that name?

Alas, Jim hadn’t entered his email correctly in our contact form, so my reply bounced right back. So, if you’re reading this, Jim, answer the question and we’ll do our best to help. And the rest of you, what might a “bush wild tomato” be?