Nibbles: CWR double, Banana threats, Banana collecting, Rice breeding, Cassava breeding, SADC livestock genebank, Community seedbank, Sunflower mapping, Restoration

  1. Why we need crop wild relatives.
  2. No, really, we need crop wild relatives.
  3. The banana is in trouble.
  4. Which is why we need to conserve banana wild relatives and landraces.
  5. Lots of wild relatives are conserved in the IRRI genebank mentioned in this Guardian article on breeding low glycemic index and high protein rice. Some of them may even have been used in this work. May look that up one day.
  6. I doubt that IITA used wild relatives in breeding these high quality cassava varieties, but there’s always a first time, and there may even be some in its genebank. I should probably look but I don’t have time for this rabbit hole today.
  7. And livestock get conserved in genebanks too, though not as much as crops. I’m really not sure how many livestock wild relatives are in the world’s genebanks, but my guess is not many.
  8. Farmers conserve crop (and livestock) diversity too, of course. And sometimes even their wild relatives.
  9. It’s amazing what can be done from space to figure out what farmers are growing. This is an example of sunflower in Ukraine, but one day we’ll even be able to locate crop wild relatives, I’m sure.
  10. To finish off, a reminder that we need conserved seed of wild species for more than just breeding: restoration too.

Nibbles: SPAM2020, Pullman genebank, Svalbard, Olive plague, Rice diversity, Vanilla threat, Gum rockrose, VACS demand, AI double, Food & climate change

  1. The latest version of the SPAM global crop area distribution model is out. You can play with it here.
  2. Some bullet points on the USDA’s National Plant Germplasm System outpost in Pullman.
  3. Yes, the above references Svalbard, as does this piece on Spanish tomatoes.
  4. Pity we can’t put olives in Svalbard, but there’s a another way to protect olive diversity.
  5. A breakdown of rice colour diversity. A lot of this stuff will be in Svalbard, with any luck.
  6. Vanilla will also need attention.
  7. But gum rockrose seems to be taken care of, at least in Bulgaria. It’s what you make Holy Chrism with.
  8. So there’s bound to be demand for it, at least in some quarters. Unlike for other opportunity/orphan/neglected crops, but GAIN is on it.
  9. And if all else fails there’s always AI, be it to fight pests and diseases or find cool plants out in the jungle.
  10. Why does all this matter? Because of the climate F-word.

Brainfood: Biodiversity nexus, Nutrition interventions, European land suitability, Beyond yield, Cover crops, CWR breeding, Rice gaps, Banana info system

Forgotten crops in the limelight

The paper “Forgotten food crops in sub-Saharan Africa for healthy diets in a changing climate” by Maarten van Zonneveld, Roeland Kindt, Stepha McMullin, Enoch G. Achigan-Dako, SognigbĂ© N’Danikou, Wei-hsun Hsieh, Yann-rong Lin, and Ian K. Dawson has won the PNAS 2023 Cozzarelli Prize for the best paper of the year in Applied Biological, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences. Here’s the abstract:

As the climate changes, major staple crop production in sub-Saharan Africa becomes increasingly vulnerable. Underutilized traditional food plants offer opportunities for diversifying cropping systems. In this study, the authors used climate niche modeling to assess the potential of 138 traditional food plants to diversify or replace staple crop production in sub-Saharan Africa by 2070. The authors report that staple crops may no longer be able to grow at approximately 10% of locations by 2070. Further, the authors identified 58 traditional crops that provide complementary micronutrient contents suitable for integration into staple cropping systems under current and projected climatic conditions. The results suggest that diversifying sub-Saharan African food production with underutilized crops could improve climate resilience and dietary health.

And here’s a video explaining the results:

Brainfood: Software edition