Indigenous knowledge systems

April 26, 2022April 26, 2022

All maize, all the time

Thanks to Jay Bost for alerting us to a whole bunch of forthcoming maize talks. The first is by Dr Helen Anne Curry today, who will use her book…

…Endangered Maize, to discuss the history of efforts to conserve crop diversity from the turn of the twentieth century until today. Focusing especially on the case of maize, she will highlight the stories about agricultural change that have motivated scientists and states to save threatened varieties—and raise questions about the agendas ultimately served by these stories.

The others start next month:

The National Agricultural Library is hosting a three-part webinar series that will highlight global food staples and the intersections of global cuisines with USDA research, social sciences, and history. The series will focus on maize and corn and its past, present, and future role in food, culture, and society. Key areas of focus for the series will be sustainability, environmental justice, social justice, and nutrition security.

April 19, 2022

Nibbles: Eat this tomato, Access to Seeds Index, Tongan coconuts, Grounding the groundnut, Traditional Spain, Genebanks in China and Nigeria, Tree conservation, Sorghum & millet breeding, Iraqi ag, Genebank presentations

Jeremy gets into tomato domestication and diversity on his podcast.
The 2021 Access to Seeds Index Insights Report is out, and includes tomatoes.
What is the most famous place for coconut varieties?
A new book attempts to decolonize the peanut.
Blood and water in Spain.
A tale of two genebanks: China and Nigeria. Maybe the African Union can help? If not, maybe China might.
Africa needs help with tree planting too. Maybe follow Italy’s example?
Though maybe sorghum and millet will be ok.
Send them to Iraqi farmers?
Presentations on seed conservation and use in genebanks.

April 19, 2022April 25, 2022

The Guardian on the guardians of agrobiodiversity

There’s a big series on agricultural biodiversity unfolding in The Guardian. So far we’ve had the following:

Our food system isn’t ready for the climate crisis, including pithy quote from yours truly.
Seed banks: the last line of defense against a threatening global food crisis, including pithy quote from my boss.
‘We’re running out of time’: Dan Saladino on why the loss of diversity in our foods matters, including numerous pithy quotes from Dan.
Blue corn and melons: meet the seed keepers reviving ancient, resilient crops, including pithy quotes from Roxanne Swentzell and others.

I’m not sure how much more there is to come, but I hope it keeps going a while yet.

LATER: There was indeed more!

April 11, 2022April 7, 2022

Brainfood: Ultra-processed food, Micronutrients, Wheat breeding, Bambara groundnut breeding, Seed longevity, Sheep diversity, Switchgrass ploidy, Seed services, Jersey in Africa, Wine history, Austronesian dispersal

Ultra-processed foods should be central to global food systems dialogue and action on biodiversity. Should.
Global plant diversity as a reservoir of micronutrients for humanity. As.
Mainstreaming grain zinc and iron concentrations in CIMMYT wheat germplasm. Eventually.
Utilization of Plant Genetic Resources of Bambara Groundnut Conserved Ex Situ and Genetic Diversification of Its Primary Genepool for Semi-Arid Production. Insufficient.
More on seed longevity phenotyping. p₅₀.
Gender dynamics around introduction of improved forages in Kenya and Ethiopia. Training.
Whole-Genome Resequencing of Worldwide Wild and Domestic Sheep Elucidates Genetic Diversity, Introgression, and Agronomically Important Loci. Hairy.
Jersey cattle in Africa: From the Breed’s Documented Past to a Profit IndexLinked Future. Promising?
A generalist–specialist trade-off between switchgrass cytotypes impacts climate adaptation and geographic range. Polyploidy!
Decentralized Seed Services in Africa. Quality.
The Rise of Wine among Ancient Civilizations across the Mediterranean Basin. Ritual.
Genome Analysis Traces Regional Dispersal of Rice in Taiwan and Southeast Asia. Ok, I give up, I can’t do this. Austronesian speakers did not spread out of Taiwan because of rice. If you can summarize that in a word, I’m impressed, so let me know.

April 4, 2022April 4, 2022

Brainfood: Digitizing collections, Bean core, Livestock diversity, Maya & maize, Fish stocks & CC, Save the weed, Flax CWR, Italian agrobiodiversity

Cross-validation of a semantic segmentation network for natural history collection specimens. Computers can distinguish the herbarium label from the actual specimen and other stuff on the sheet, helping with the whole automatic digitization thing, but it takes some really fancy math.
The landscapes of livestock diversity: grazing local breeds as a proxy for domesticated species adaptation to the environment. Medium fancy math used to map breed diversity in the Iberian Peninsula for different livestock species and relate it to environmental factors.
South-to-north migration preceded the advent of intensive farming in the Maya region. Sort of like tomato, but in the other direction. Plenty of math involved, but behind the scenes, thankfully.
Timing and magnitude of climate-driven range shifts in transboundary fish stocks challenge their management. Huge amount of data and very fancy math shows fish are in trouble.
A Core Set of Snap Bean Genotypes Established by Phenotyping a Large Panel Collected in Europe. Ok, even I can follow the math on this one.
Assessment of biogeographic variation in traits of Lewis flax (Linum lewisii) for use in restoration and agriculture. Very approachable math shows which populations of a CWR can best be used for restoration, and where; and also for domestication and breeding.
An updated checklist of plant agrobiodiversity of northern Italy. Very useful use of very basic maths. Key number: only 43% of the PGR on the list are conserved ex situ.
Cannabis, the multibillion dollar plant that no genebank wanted. No math needed to figure out weed needs a genebank.