- Agriculture is bad for natural ecosystems. But great for maps, you have to admit.
- Greens are good for you. And this is a great roundup of the latest scholarship on brassica evolution, domestication and diversity. You’ll find most of the paper quoted in past Brainfoods.
- Grains are great. Especially with greens.
- Thank goodness for household seed banking. Especially in conjunction with the formal kind.
- All so we can breed a better peanut. And cut down more natural ecosystem?
- No, there’s community genebanks for that too…
Brainfood: Genetic erosion edition
- Crop diversity trends captured by Indigenous and local knowledge: introduction to the symposium. A whole symposium on how Indigenous knowledge reveals widespread loss of traditional crops and landraces, and the increasing adoption of high-yielding varieties, driven by economic, political, climatic, and sociocultural forces.
- Landraces and climate change: global trends through the lens of political agroecology. Structural forces (markets, policies) and unequal power in seed systems drive the decline of traditional varieties and marginalize Indigenous and local knowledge about crop diversity; climate change not so much.
- Smallholders farmers defying global genetic erosion: documenting 60 years of peanut landrace conservation in a South American diversity center. Well, not everywhere. I wonder why…
- Farmers hold diverse and connected values towards crops. The global literature shows that farmers value crops not just for yield and profit, but for a wide range of interconnected economic, agronomic, ecological, social, and cultural reasons that vary across farming systems, and recognizing these diverse values can improve research and policy on agricultural sustainability and crop diversity. So that’s why.
- Towards a holistic framework: Exploring the relationship between seed security and food security dynamics among smallholder farmers in Chimanimani, Zimbabwe. The link between smallholder seed and food security is complex, non-linear, and shaped by socio-economic, environmental, and policy factors, showing that having secure access to seed does not automatically translate into food security and that context-specific, systemic approaches are needed to understand and strengthen both.
- The local crop varieties (farmers’ varieties) registration system in Nepal: Past, present and future. It may all be very complex, but legally recognizing and protecting farmer-developed landraces within a formal seed regime can empower farmers, conserve agrobiodiversity, and strengthen seed system resilience.
- Leveraging Earth Observation Technologies to Monitor Essential Genetic Diversity. Nah, we can do it from space.
Nibbles: German genebank, Bambara groundnut, Community seedbanks, Atacama genebank, Georgian traditional crops
- Seed saving at IPK handed over.
- Why Bambara groundnut needs saving.
- Kenyan women get together to save seeds.
- Saving seeds in the Atacama Desert.
- Saving wheat and vines in Georgia.
Nibbles: Restoration, Monitoring, CARDI, Margot Forde, Warwick, Slow Beans 2025, Lonicera
- Africa needs good forest seeds.
- And genetic monitoring of the resulting plantings, probably.
- The Caribbean also wants quality seed, and thinks a mobile seed bank is the way to get it.
- The only mobile things about New Zealand’s genebank are its collectors.
- A very mobile donation to the UK’s vegetable genebank.
- Nothing very mobile about Slow Beans 2025, but that’s the point.
- The long journey of honeysuckle.
Nibbles: Ukraine duplication, Mexican native maize, Andean agriculture double, Campanian crops double, Pacific cryobank, Moringa promotion
- A little more safety for Ukraine’s seeds, thanks to a new genebank.
- A little more safety for Mexico’s native maize, thanks to Pres. Sheinbaum.
- A little more safety for Andean agriculture, thanks to Ecuadorian Indigenous women and Inside Mater in Peru.
- A little more safety for Ischia’s zampognaro bean and Amalfi’s lemons, thanks to local people (and GIAHS).
- A little more safety for Pacific crops, thanks to cryopreservation. Breadfruit next?
- A little more safety for moringa? At least in Africa with all its “opportunity crops”?