- Haga Hideo’s 1950s photos of Fukushima farming rituals are now being used to revive them: ex situ conservation, but for culture.
- Long before photography, or “pre‑breeding” was a buzzword, Belgian pomologist Jean‑Baptiste Van Mons was running massive pear selection trials and gifting us Beurré Bosc and Doyenné Boussock.
- As Southern Africa’s miombo woodlands shrinks, scientists are cloning wild trees so the fruit — and food security — outlive the forest. Now for the pre-breeding.
- Greenpeace Africa’s Seed Project makes the case for indigenous seeds as a route to farmer independence. And you can help.
- And oh so coincidentally, a network of community seed banks in Kenya is rescuing indigenous seeds so the diversity is still around when opportunity (or crisis) knocks.
- Also in Kenya, the national genebank’s collectors are racing to secure opportunity crops.
- Nepal’s indigenous crops and landraces are at the same time more needed than ever, and under threat. So, much like in Kenya.
- The Alliance of Bioversity and CIAT says women are at the center of sustainable food systems; the fine print adds: “as they have always been.”
Joining the dots on food plant diversity
We have access to more kinds of food plants, yet the world’s diets and production systems have never been more alike. That is the paradox at the heart of Food plant diversity in a rapidly changing world, an unusually broad review by Colin Khoury (very much friend of the blog) and colleagues. It has all the latest data, but it also does several other things that make it more than a conventional state-of-the-art paper.
For one, it brings together diversity at several levels that are too often discussed separately: species, varieties and genes, of course, but also the diversity of diets, farming systems, foodways and the knowledge associated with them. It traces the movement of cultivated food plants over the past 12,000 years alongside the much more recent trend towards homogenisation. The result is the weird world we live in today: more kinds of crops available globally, but less difference between what people in different places eat.
Colin and friends also take a hard look at what we don’t know. We have surprisingly little evidence for how much food-plant diversity has actually been lost, how vulnerable today’s production systems are because of increasing uniformity, or what is happening to less visible forms of diversity, such as nutritional and chemical variation. The authors call for better monitoring, including an early-warning system for crop vulnerability. Now where have I heard that before?
And the paper connects the dots between conservation approaches that all too often live in isolation: genebanks, botanic gardens, community seed banks, on-farm initiatives, protected areas, breeding programmes and markets. Genebanks are all well and good, but diversity also needs to keep going in fields, landscapes, cuisines and communities. Again, not particularly new, but it’s good to have it repeated, brought up to date, and placed in the broadest possible context.
A couple of those dots are discussed in more detail in a companion opinion paper, Enhance food plant diversity conservation and use through greater coordination between genebanks and botanic gardens, which asks what might become possible if two of the world’s major plant conservation communities worked a bit more closely together. Which must be possible because they are nicely complementary, so neither should fear the other as a competitor.
The review paper maps the problem. The opinion piece explores a possible route towards a more joined-up conservation system. Which leaves us with its own small paradox: conserving food plant diversity requires flattening some of the differences within a remarkably diverse conservation community. Happy Crop Diversity Day 2026.
Brainfood: From data to action
- A three-decade-long analysis shows rising threatened species and responsibility gaps in global supply chains. Data says that we must make responsibility for biodiversity traceable from production to final demand.
- Development of an evidence-based integrated germplasm prioritization framework for conservation and breeding. Data says: here’s how to extract some defensible conservation and breeding priorities from this large collection.
- A methodological framework for the standardised evaluation of olive genetic resources: GEN4OLIVE harmonized protocols. Data says that we should standardise phenotyping across countries to make olive germplasm more useful in breeding.
- High-throughput phenotyping of Bambara groundnut [Vigna subterranea (L.) Verdc.] seed morphometrics using videometer. Data says that we should use multispectral imaging to really speed up seed characterization and breeding in Bambara groundnut.
- Predicting the cross-continental spread of the cassava brown streak disease epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa. Data says that we must strengthen surveillance and delivery systems for clean planting material before cassava brown streak disease reaches Nigeria.
- The Sustainability of Robusta Coffee Under Global Change—A Review. Data says that we must match robusta production to genuinely suitable environments, plus invest in lower-input cultivation and alternative coffee species.
- Borassus Akeassii Facing Societal and Environmental Challenges: Case Study of the Gouin Society of Southwestern Burkina Faso. Data says that we need to conserve this multipurpose palm once central to Gouin livelihoods together with the local knowledge and practices that make it useful.
Nibbles: Pasiega cow, Goat-cow, Badri cow, Zimbabwe festival, Heirloom apples, South Korea genebank, Marmottier, Radiation breeding
- Cantabria is putting the Pasiega cow in the bank. Just in case.
- Spain’s “goat-cows” are fighting wildfires the old-fashioned way: by eating the fuel. I hope they’re in the bank too.
- India has made a Badri calf in a lab. Conservation meets IVF.
- Old apples are having a revival. Turns out forgotten apple varieties can taste pretty good. Well I never, is it that time of year already?
- Zimbabwe’s Mbire district celebrates seed, food and culture with a festival. What, no cows? Or apples?
- South Korea is looking for partners to save climate-resilient plants. A seed vault is better with friends.
- The marmottier can’t decide whether it’s a plum or an apricot. Botanists sympathise.
- In the atomic age, gardeners irradiated seeds and waited for something interesting to grow. Sometimes it did.
Brainfood: Opportunity crops, meet your constraints
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There’s a wave of groundwork being laid — genomic, cultural, and geospatial — for opportunity crops, but the governance, disease-pressure, market and environmental constraints that marginalized them in the first place are still very much active, and in some cases actively winning.
- Constraints on crop diversification under drought: Multi-scale evidence from California’s San Joaquin Valley. Consolidation, land tenure and water access limits farmers’ ability to switch crops.
- Fragmented urban food governance and impacts on the marginalisation of indigenous crops in Ghana. City plans sideline indigenous crops, and communities pay the price.
- Full Genome Characterization of the Causal Virus of Yellow Mosaic Disease in Mungbean Minicore Accessions. Technical barriers block the path from potential to harvest.
- Capsicum pubescens Ruiz & Pav.: evolutionary history, domestication, genetic resources and future opportunities for an overlooked Andean crop. Genomic evidence reveals substantial diversity in this overlooked Andean pepper but also major conservation gaps, particularly in Bolivia, highlighting opportunities for both crop improvement and biocultural conservation.
- Bitter vetch (Vicia ervilia (L.) Willd.): current research advances and future perspectives for a neglected legume crop. It was dropped because of anti-nutritional quirks, but should, and could, return for marginal lands.
- Genetic characterization of a global collection of common buckwheat to harness genetic resources for agricultural diversity. Hidden diversity is still out there.
- Genotype-by-sequencing of global hyacinth bean (Lablab purpureus) collections provides genomic resources for crop conservation and improvement. Diversity survives in farmer fields and genebanks.
- Wild Edible Greens Heritage in Western Crete and Its Resilience Across Greek Islands: The Role of Small-Scale Farming, Biodiversity, and Isolation. Small-scale farming sustains knowledge of wild edible greens across Greek islands, showing that opportunity crops depend on living farming cultures.
- African Crop Calendar: A geo-referenced dataset of crop growing seasons across diverse agro-ecological regions. Where (or should that be when) alternative crops might fit within agricultural systems.