- Big IUCN report says that biodiversity and agriculture are in conflict, they don’t really need to be, but it’s really complicated for them not to be. So that’s us all told.
- If only annual crops were perennial, for example, eh?
- If only we incorporated more sustainable agriculture in education, for example, eh? Apart from anything else we could still have beer. No word on the role of perennial barley though.
- If only improved seeds were open source, for example, eh?
- If only we could cryopreserve coral, for example, eh? Wait, what?
Nibbles: China genebanks, African genebanks, PNG genebank, Opportunity crops, Bananocalypse, IRRI genebank, African Runner Peanut, Australian genebank, Agrobiodiversity, Navajo agriculture, Wayuu agriculture, COPs
- With remarkable regularity, China announces some impressive genebank thing. Like a catalog for 105 tropical crop genebanks. But where is it?
- On the other hand, we probably don’t hear enough about African genebanks, so this piece is very welcome.
- Or about genebanks in Papua New Guinea, for that matter.
- Have we heard enough about “opportunity crops” yet? No, probably not.
- We will never stop hearing about the “bananocalypse,” I suspect.
- Or about the IRRI genebank from Mike Jackson. Not that I mind.
- The latest on the African Runner Peanut, about which we have blogged before. Several times. Not that I mind.
- I will never tire of hearing about genebanks getting loads of money.
- I will also never tire of hearing about win-win outcomes for biodiversity and food production.
- The Navajo know all about that. And the Wayuu people in Guajira, Colombia for that matter.
- We will soon all be tired of hearing about all the various COPs, but for now let’s see what the Dutch genebank and, let’s see who else we have, ok, sure, why not, ESG investors — what do they have to say?
Brainfood: EU landraces, EU GIs, Citizen fruit scientists, Nordic potatoes, Czech wheat, German wheat, Wild Brassica collecting, Chinese & European soybeans, Italian goats
- Landrace in situ (on-farm) conservation: European Union achievements. Lots of organizations and farmers are conserving landraces in Europe, in lots of ways, and pretty successfully, but the most sustainable way to do so would be to decrease barriers to their marketing, in particular in the context of organic agriculture.
- An assessment of the implementation of the EU policy for conservation varieties from 2009 to 2023 and its relationship to Geographical Indications. Few European GIs use conservation varieties (i.e. landraces), but this should, and probably will, change.
- New citizen science initiative enhances flowering onset predictions for fruit trees in Great Britain. Imagine doing this for European landraces.
- Genetic markers identify duplicates in Nordic potato collections. Ooops, some alleged landraces in European genebanks turn out to be old improved varieties.
- Curation of historical phenotypic wheat data from the Czech Genebank for research and breeding. You need data on all those landraces if people are going to use them. Citizen scientists might help, I guess.
- Trait-customized sampling of core collections from a winter wheat genebank collection supports association studies. But you need to use that data to create subsets first, and you can do that in lots of different ways, for different purposes: let the German genebank show you how.
- Collecting Mediterranean wild species of the Brassica oleracea group (Brassica sect. Brassica). Even in Europe some gap-filling collecting is still necessary.
- A comparison of Chinese wild and cultivar soybean with European soybean collections on genetic diversity by Genome-Wide Scan. Even breeders in the soybean center of diversity might find material from Europe’s genebanks useful.
- Can Sustainability and Biodiversity Conservation Save Native Goat Breeds? The Situation in Campania Region (Southern Italy) between History and Regional Policy Interventions. Conservation livestock breeds, anyone?
Nibbles: CWR double, Banana threats, Banana collecting, Rice breeding, Cassava breeding, SADC livestock genebank, Community seedbank, Sunflower mapping, Restoration
- Why we need crop wild relatives.
- No, really, we need crop wild relatives.
- The banana is in trouble.
- Which is why we need to conserve banana wild relatives and landraces.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Farmers conserve crop (and livestock) diversity too, of course. And sometimes even their wild relatives.
- 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.
- To finish off, a reminder that we need conserved seed of wild species for more than just breeding: restoration too.
Brainfood: Diverse ecologists, Wild vs cultivated, Ecosystem services, Indigenous people, Mixtures, On-farm trees, Monitoring protected areas, Social media & protected areas, Wild harvesting, Land sparing vs sharing, Agroecology & plant health, Wild vs cultivated
- On the importance of diversity in ecological research. Diversity of the research teams, that is. This should apply to everything that follows.
- Adapting wild biodiversity conservation approaches to conserve agrobiodiversity. The main gap seem to be in the area of “payment for system services.” Agrobiodiversity could learn from biodiversity there.
- The Role of Crop, Livestock, and Farmed Aquatic Intraspecific Diversity in Maintaining Ecosystem Services. And there’s a lot to pay for, apparently.
- No basis for claim that 80% of biodiversity is found in Indigenous territories. There are better numbers for the undoubted (but alas still unrewarded) importance of Indigenous people for biodiversity conservation.
- Plant diversity decreases greenhouse gas emissions by increasing soil and plant carbon storage in terrestrial ecosystems. Huge meta-analysis says plant mixtures are better than monocultures for C storage. Maybe someone should pay for that?
- Food-sourcing from on-farm trees mediates positive relationships between tree cover and dietary quality in Malawi. And some of those trees will be wild.
- Delivering Systematic and Repeatable Area-Based Conservation Assessments: From Global to Local Scales. Actually, the Digital Observatory for Protected Areas (DOPA) could also usefully be applied to agricultural biodiversity.
- Applying deep learning on social media to investigate cultural ecosystem services in protected areas worldwide. Well, of course, it was only a matter of time. And the above comment also applies.
- Does long-term harvesting impact genetic diversity and population genetic structure? A study of Indian gooseberry (Phyllanthus emblica) in the Central Western Ghats region in India. AI will only get you so far. But it would be interesting to see if AI could have predicted these results. More training dataset needed, I suspect.
- Agrobiodiversity conservation enables sustainable and equitable land sparing. Intensifying agriculture can be good for land sparing, but its sustainability depends on land sharing. Nice way to escape the dichotomy.
- Towards an agroecological approach to crop health: reducing pest incidence through synergies between plant diversity and soil microbial ecology. I guess this is an example of the above.
- Are agricultural commodity production systems at risk from local biodiversity loss? Have you not been listening?