Seed Systems and Agrobiodiversity: The Book

The Dutch ambassador to Ethiopia in his opening speech stressed that a well functioning seed system is crucial for improving food security, increasing agricultural export, and conserving agrobiodiversity.

That’s one enlightened ambassador. He was launching a book, which you can download in its entirety: Farmers, seeds and varieties. Supporting informal seed supply in Ethiopia, edited by Thijssen, M.H., Zewdie Bishaw, Abdurahman Beshir, Walter S. de Boef.

Professor screws up on domestication?

I’m having a domestication research moment today, after reading an interview full of inaccuracies by a renowned professor (I won’t name names). After spotting two major screw ups in his logic and several outright wrong ‘facts’, I’ve decided to be more thorough and start digging into West African yam domestication and the process that leads to it.

Oh name names, Mathilda, please!

Incidentally, there’s lots of agrobiodiversity stuff, including on domestication and crop wild relatives, at the open-access journal Ethnobotany Research and Applications. Just found out about it at Cultural Landscapes.