- New(ish) website for the Peruvian national genebank.
- WorldVeg genebank reaches out to Southeast Asia.
- CIMMYT genebank reaches out at COP15.
- Nigerian national genebank gets advice.
- USDA’s genebank at the University of Georgia makes it into the local paper.
- Shout-out for community seedbanks in Mexico, or Fondos de Semillas Familiares actually. National genebank unavailable for comment.
- All well and good, but genebanks need a Resilient Seed Systems Shared Action Framework.
- And, of course, they are complementary to in situ/on farm conservation. How exactly does that work? Let Dr Nigel Maxted tell you. For an hour.
Nibbles: Agroforestry, Old tea trees, Rare magnolia, New Brachiaria, Animal-based food, Oman livestock genebank
Happy Food Diversity Day!
On Friday January 13th, from 9am to 7.30pm, some of the UK’s leading scientists, writers, chefs, farmers, campaigners and entrepreneurs will be taking part in a continuous feed of discussions, storytelling and information sharing – all about the wonders and importance of food diversity. These discussions will be made available for free via Eventbrite, live-streamed on YouTube and available to view after the event. Explore the resources for each of the sessions here.
This seems to be the brainchild of Dan Saladino, who recently published the wonderful Eating to Extinction.
LATER: And then there’s this talk from the Seed Detective on the 25th to round things off.
Nibbles: Diets, Millet seedbank, Healthy rice, Kazakh genebank, Decentralized seeds, Planet Local, White sage, White olive, Talangana collecting, Nature-based, Italian food, Citron, Indian quinoa, Crop expansion
- And…we’re back!
- Nice new infographics derived from that classic paper “Increasing homogeneity in global food supplies and the implications for food security.”
- Video on a millet community seedbank in India.
- I hope all these healthy Indian rices are in seedbanks somewhere, community or otherwise.
- Kazakhstan is getting a new genebank, and I don’t mean a community one.
- yeah but genebanks are not enough: enter INCREASE.
- Wait, there’s a World Localization Day?
- Looks like white sage might need less localization and more seedbanks.
- I see your Mexican white sage and raise you the Calabrian white olive.
- The Telangana equivalent of white sage is probably safe, though, if this collecting programme is anything to go by.
- IFAD pushes nature-based farmers. White sage unavailable for comment.
- The localization narrative meets Italian food. And yes, spoiler alert, Italian food does exist. Despite the increasing homogeneity in global food supplies. And it doesn’t need white olives either.
- Let the hand-wringing about the Italian-ness (Italianity?) of citrons commence. But not until I’ve left the room.
- Ah, but is there such a thing as Indian food? I mean, if there’s quinoa in it. I look forward to the eventual quinoa community seedbanks.
- All those crops are not being locally grown for food anyway.
- Have a happy new globalizing, localizing year, everyone.
Brainfood: Neolithic microbiomes, Transeurasian languages, Rice history, Chinese Neolithic, Indo-European origins, Chalcolithic stews, Indus Valley hydrology, Bronze Age opium, Cassava storage
- Ancient oral microbiomes support gradual Neolithic dietary shifts towards agriculture. The adoption of agriculture was gradual.
- Triangulation supports agricultural spread of the Transeurasian languages. The ancestors of the speakers of 98 related languages — including Japanese, Korean, Tungusic, Mongolic and Turkic — were the first millet farmers gradually spreading across Northeast Asia.
- Modelling the chronology and dynamics of the spread of Asian rice from ca. 8000 BCE to 1000 CE. Deep breath. Rice domestication originated in eastern China (7430 BCE) and northeastern South Asia (6460 BCE). Then gradually spread in 2 waves: (1) in the 4th-3rd millennia BCE to the rest of China and SE Asia, associated with millet cultivation (Transeurasian speakers?), and (2) in 1st BCE-1st CE to Liao River region, Central Asia, and Africa.
- Plant foods consumed at the Neolithic site of Qujialing (ca. 5800-4200 BP) in Jianghan Plain of the middle catchment of Yangtze River, China. Not just rice and millets but also job’s tears, lotus roots, yam, acorns and beans.
- Indo-European cereal terminology suggests a Northwest Pontic homeland for the core Indo-European languages. The speakers of Proto-Indo-European, on the other hand, gradually making their way from the steppes, were not farmers.
- Revealing invisible stews: new results of organic residue analyses of Beveled Rim Bowls from the Late Chalcolithic site of Shakhi Kora, Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Not by bread alone… Iconic, hastily-made, throw-away pottery bowls from 3500 BCE were not bread moulds but rather held tasty stews. No job’s tears and lotus roots, alas, though.
- Phytoliths as indicators of plant water availability: The case of millets cultivation in the Indus Valley civilization. Sorghum and millets were growing under water stress at several Mature Harappan (2500–1900 BCE) sites. But they could take it.
- Opium trade and use during the Late Bronze Age: Organic residue analysis of ceramic vessels from the burials of Tel Yehud, Israel. People were getting high in the 14th century BCE. And who can blame them, after millennia of domesticating plants and gradually spreading around the world.
- Adaptations of Pre-Columbian Manioc Storage Techniques as Strategies to Adapt to Extreme Climatic Events in Amazonian Floodplains. Some current agricultural practices can be seen in the archaeological record. And not just getting high on opium.
- See you in the new year, everyone!