Genetic diversity

August 28, 2025August 28, 2025

How to revive your landraces

How can we help get humble heirloom varieties of the humble potato back into cultivation? Well, fortunately, Potato News Today ¹ has a handy step-by-step guide, which I reproduce verbatim below:

Start with a story you can legally sell. In Europe/UK, use the conservation-variety route; in North America, lean on certified seed suppliers and Indigenous stewardship agreements.
Source clean, traceable stock. CIP and the U.S. Potato Genebank maintain indexed, disease-tested material; combine with reputable local seed houses.
Pilot with chefs and specialty retail. Early-season launches with menu credit and a farm feature move the needle.
Package the provenance. PDO/PGI examples like Jersey Royal and Papas Antiguas de Canarias show how origin, agronomy, and micro-harvest rituals create value.
Engineer storage for shape and use. Follow the curing/holding guidance above.
Ride the calendar. Tie launches and media to the International Day of Potato (30 May) or to local potato festivals.

Sounds pretty sensible, and applicable to other crops as well, I suspect, with a little tweak here and there.

The article also has a list of case studies. This doesn’t include any examples from Italy, but coincidentally a recent paper describes just such a thing. Which maybe points to something that is missing from the Potato News Today playbook, and that is having lots of interesting characterization and other data on your heirloom landraces handy to help get them ready for prime time.

August 18, 2025August 18, 2025

Brainfood: Agroforestry, Afro-descendant conservation, Opportunity crops, Off-farm income, Phureja conservation, European taro, Argania products, Honeybee intensification, Mycorrhizal hotspots

Effects of tree cover and crop diversity on biodiversity and food security in tropical agricultural landscapes. In tropical agricultural landscapes, modest tree cover in diverse cropping systems supports higher biodiversity and higher crop yields, demonstrating that agroforestry can deliver win-win synergy between conservation and food production.
Afro-descendant lands in South America contribute to biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation. I guess biodiverse landscapes managed according to traditional knowledge deliver superior environmental outcomes not just in farms with trees but also in forested territories under community management.
Science for Africa’s future food security: reimagining the histories and futures of underutilised crops. Reviving indigenous, underutilised crops in sub-Saharan Africa by restoring their historical and cultural significance can enhance nutritional diversity, climate resilience and food security, paralleling the evidence above that culturally rooted, biodiversity-rich systems are good for both the environment and communities.
Off-farm income and dietary diversity in subsistence farming in Burundi. Across rural and urban settings, from farms to forests to cities, culture-informed, biodiversity-rich food systems offer interlocking benefits: ecological resilience, climate mitigation, improved nutrition, and community empowerment. Or am I stretching a point here?
Cultivar loss and conservation of genetic resources of the phureja potato (Solanum phureja L., Phureja Group) in Peru. Traditional Andean farming communities are witnessing the disappearance of this culturally significant diploid potato group, which has rich genetic diversity and interesting adaptations, highlighting an urgent need for in situ conservation to preserve it. Oh wow, look, locally rooted, biodiversity-rich farming systems, anchored in cultural heritage, are key to sustaining ecosystem services, safeguarding genetic diversity, and building climate-resilient, equitable food futures. Again.
Taro (Colocasia esculenta) in Europe: a journey through fields, botanical gardens, ditches and city markets. This culturally important root crop was introduced in Europe in antiquity and now survives in fields, markets, and even city waterways as both ornament and food, but despite its genetic and cultural richness, it remains under-researched and requires both ex situ and in situ conservation to safeguard its long-term use. So yep, even this one says that conserving crop diversity through culturally embedded, multi-dimensional stewardship is essential for strengthening food security and preserving heritage in a changing climate.
Innovation of argan (Argania spinosa (L.) Skeels) products and byproducts for sustainable development of rural communities in Morocco. A systematic literature review. Innovative uses of argan tree products and by-products in Morocco, from bioplastics and biochar to livestock feed and natural repellents, offer promising pathways for conservation, cultural preservation, and rural economic development, provided local communities are actively engaged in participatory management. Where have I heard that before?
Negative ecological impacts of honeybees begin at densities below recommended levels for crop pollination. Too many honeybee hives can reduce wild bee abundance, species richness, and fruit yield on farms, even when wildflower strips are present, suggesting that ecological balance is disrupted when managed pollinators outcompete native species. Which can probably be cleverly connected with all of the above with a little more time than I have at the moment.
Global hotspots of mycorrhizal fungal richness are poorly protected. What can I tell you, we need in situ conservation for mycorrhiza too. And machine learning can help us figure out where best to do it. For all of the above, and more, naturally.

August 12, 2025August 15, 2025

Nibbles: SOTW report, Food prices, Rex Bernardo, Odisha landraces, Cyprus community seedbank, Haiti seed producers, Trees for the Future, Iraq genebank, Sudan genebank, Climate-Conflict-Vulnerability Index, India SDG2,

FAO explains why crop diversity matters.
Well, for one thing, there’s food prices, that’s why.
Ah, yes, crop diversity: “You gotta have it. You gotta use it. You gotta talk about it.”
Odisha mainstreams landrace diversity in its seed system.
Meanwhile, the Farmers Union of Cyprus is stashing seeds away in Community Bank of Cypriot Traditional Seeds.
Looks a bit like the Groupements de Production Artisanale de Semences in Haiti. If you squint.
If only there were some guidelines for managing such community seed banks.
Iraqi Kurdistan gets in on the genebank act.
Iraq used to have a genebank, but what happened to it has just happened in Sudan.
Ah, to have a Climate—Conflict—Vulnerability Index so that such things could be predicted and steps taken.
And a monitoring system and some targets would be good too.

August 6, 2025August 7, 2025

Tuber or not tuber

A paper in Cell has really caught the imagination of the media in the past few days. You wouldn’t necessarily be able to guess why from its title, though: “Ancient hybridization underlies tuberization and radiation of the potato lineage.” The reason for all the interest, I guess, is that the hybridization in question was between a potato ancestor with no tubers and a plant that was closer to a tomato. Yes, two genes from distant lineages, neither tuber-forming, combined by chance some 9 million years ago to produce the progenitor of all tuber-bearing potatoes, which then diversified as the Andes were uplifted and themselves diversified. Definitely worth the hoopla.

Jeremy also includes the paper in his latest newsletter.

July 22, 2025

Cock and bull stories of crop diversity

In his latest Eat This Newsletter, Jeremy deconstructs a paper on Tiggiano and Polignano heriloom carrots…

Culturally, each landrace is associated with a local patron saint, St Vitus in Polignano and St Ippazio in Tiggiano. Flavia Giordano notes that St Ippazio is “the protector of virility and male reproductive health, symbolically linked to the carrot’s elongated shape”. Which is odd, considering that all the commentary I’ve seen, including Flavia’s, agrees that Tiggiano carrots lose their turgidity very rapidly.

…and also points to an article about “the “Garlic Nerds” who are persuading garlic to reproduce sexually and then using the resulting seeds to develop new strains.” No word on the hairiness of said new strains.