History

June 25, 2020June 26, 2020

Nibbles: Black rice, Citrus pollen, Swiss nuts, GIAHS, Seedy IUCN

Australia delves into black rice, thanks to IRRI genebank.
Romans had mandarins after all.
Switzerland protects walnut oil.
Hanging gardens, lagoon farms and traditional bamboo agroforestry are exactly what I need at the moment.
The IUCN Seed Conservation Specialist Group has a new website.

June 24, 2020June 22, 2020

Nibbles: Resistance edition

The plantation roots of the food system need to be pulled out.
And biodiversity collections decolonized.
And protected areas too while we’re at it.

June 23, 2020June 22, 2020

Nibbles: High edition

South Africa looks to legalize weed.
Quick gallop through the chemistry of food. Weed brownies not covered.
Is your salad this diverse? Weed not included.

June 20, 2020June 19, 2020

Nibbles: Carver, Banana phenotyping, Wild wheat project, Chinese chillies, Tea book

George Washington Carver‘s legacy lives on.
Finding drought-resistant bananas: the movie.
Mining wild wheat. Again.
The definitive book on hot peppers in China. And I’ll save you a few clicks, here’s the video alluded to in the review.
The definitive book on tea. Not just China either.

June 16, 2020June 15, 2020

Nibbles: Oz wine atlas, Microbiome vault, Guerrilla breeding, Seed relief bibliography, Food archaeology, Seed producers, Marmalade

The future of Australian wine in maps.
A Svalbard for the human microbiome?
Plant breeders on the edge of the mainstream.
From FAO, a bibliography on seed systems and seed relief.
Book review: The Archaeology of Food: Identity, Politics, and Ideology in the Prehistoric and Historic Past.
Training seed producer groups can help their non-member neighbours too.
There will be marmalade for tea. But, spoiler alert, it might not be what you think.

1. What has agrobiodiversity ever done for us? Kent Nnadozie of the Plant Treaty lays it out.
2. Michael Frei of the HealthyDiets4Africa project doesn’t need it laid out.
3. Neither do the people who awarded a prize to Charlotte Allender of the UK Vegetable Genebank.
4. What has the US National Plant Germplasm System ever done for anyone? The Guardian, the NY Times and NPR News lay it out. I guess someone in D.C. needs it laid out, but will it make any difference?
5. Everyone: Potatoes in Florida! Breeders: No problem. NPGS: You called?
6. Here’s The Guardian again, but this time thinking it is making the case for not putting seeds in the fridge, whereas in fact it’s making the case for the complementarity of ex situ and on-farm conservation.
7. Speaking of on-farm conservation, here’s a couple of pieces on community seed banks in Guatemala.
8. Speaking of on-farm conservation, here’s the heart-warming story of Welsh organic farmer Gerald Miles.
9. Meanwhile, the World Vegetable Centre opens a new genebank.
10. And Türkiye hosts an international, no less, olive genebank.
11. And genebanks can be so beautiful, like works of art. Former Tate Modern director Vicente Todolí lays out his citrus samples. I wonder what he could do with olives.
12. Botanic gardens are beautiful and often act a little bit like crop genebanks. Here’s an example from Portugal I stumbled onto recently, I forget how.
13. You know what I’d like to see? An international pepper genebank, that’s what. No, not the kind that might be in those Guatemalan community seedbanks or the WorldVeg genebank. This sort of pepper. Piper pepper.
14. I bet the ancient Egyptians had pepper. Egyptian archaeologist Mennat-Allah El Dorry lays out what else they had.
15. Maybe you could lay out world history using pepper. You can definitely do so using cacao and chocolate.
16. No, not using ancient DNA, but actually…
Published on April 4, 2025