- The Coffee Science Foundation is the science foundation we all need.
- In search of Bob’s ganja.
- Vox vid on saving crop diversity. Pretty good, except for that thorn apple thing.
- GIZ support for the CIP genebank.
- Ex-CIP breeder works with VIR to bring wild potatoes to Cornell.
- Or friend Lex Thomson on why Fiji is a hibiscus hotspot.
- Celebrate European cereal diversity.
- Dan Barber on freeing the seed. The polarisation continues.
- The first British farmers walked there.
- CIMMYT rebuttal of a paper saying European wheat varieties are decreasing in their climate resilience.
- Celery was once a luxury.
Nibbles: Ancient drugs, Potato genebank people, Hot potato, IPBES report, Iowa State doc, Vanilla banana, Indian rice lady, ITPGRFA
- The deep history of inhaling.
- CIP genebank scientists honoured.
- But do they know about the most expensive potato in the world?
- The thinking behind that IPBES 1 million threatened species number.
- Seed documentary wins awards.
- Tasty blue bananas.
- One-woman genebank in India.
- Meanwhile, in Rome, negotiations to improve the Plant Treaty continue… Fingers crossed.
Cheers!
I know we’re a day late, but let’s celebrate the International Day for Biological Diversity with antique yeast in a Belgian monastery.
Brainfood: More than yield, Cotton breeding, Chickpea genome, Mutations & domestication, Holy Grail, Restoration, Watermelon diversity, Language diversity, Ocimum diversity, Clean cassava, Neolithic feasting, Amazonian agriculture, Sharecropping
- The paradox of productivity: agricultural productivity promotes food system inefficiency. It’s the cheap calories, stupid.
- Genetic Evaluation of Exotic Chromatins from Two Obsolete Interspecific Introgression Lines of Upland Cotton for Fiber Quality Improvement. Yield from one species, fibre quality from the other.
- Resequencing of 429 chickpea accessions from 45 countries provides insights into genome diversity, domestication and agronomic traits. Including drought tolerance.
- Genome of ‘Charleston Gray’, the principal American watermelon cultivar, and genetic characterization of 1,365 accessions in the U.S. National Plant Germplasm System watermelon collection. Four genetic groups reflecting geography.
- Genome-wide nucleotide patterns and potential mechanisms of genome divergence following domestication in maize and soybean. The best candidates for domestication are plants that are willing to mutate a bit, but not too much.
- Crop Biodiversity: An Unfinished Magnum Opus of Nature. “Linking genotype and phenotype remains the holy grail of crop biodiversity studies.”
- Meeting global land restoration and protection targets: What would the world look like in 2050? Very nice. It would look very nice.
- The ecological drivers of variation in global language diversity. High year-round productivity leads to lots of languages. And lots of biodiversity, but that’s another story.
- Product authenticity versus globalisation—The Tulsi case. The division of Indian Holy Basil into 3 types based on traditional knowledge is only partially supported by genetic and phytochemical studies.
- A method for generating virus-free cassava plants to combat viral disease epidemics in Africa. Let the distribution commence.
- Cereal processing at Early Neolithic Göbekli Tepe, southeastern Turkey. They must have been some feasts.
- Persistent Early to Middle Holocene tropical foraging in southwestern Amazonia. On the cusp of agriculture 10,000 years ago in Bolivia. That’s about the same time as Göbekli Tepe, give or take a thousand years.
- Moral Hazard: Experimental Evidence from Tenancy Contracts. Tenant farmers should keep a higher share to increase productivity and diversity, but of course the landlords won’t let them so what’s needed is revolution.
Nibbles: Dog & bone, Giant maize, Edible Archive, Myanmar diversification, Colombian community seedbank, Sorghum grande, Coconut exhibit, Chinese ag history, African domestication, Japanese citrus, RivieraLigure DOP, Cactus candy, Hazelnut resistance, American crop rethinks, Public sector engagement
- Nice synthesis of dog (and chicken) domestication.
- Saving the Jala maize landrace in Mexico.
- Saving lots of rice landraces in India by eating them.
- Myanmar does not live by rice alone. And neither does India.
- Saving a whole bunch of stuff in Colombia.
- Saving a sorghum wild relative in Australia.
- How coconuts can help museums decolonize.
- Maybe agricultural development needs to decolonize too. Discuss.
- Africa’s Fertile Crescent is the Niger River Basin. Nice, but we saw that coming first.
- Citrus is big in Japan.
- Olive oil is big in Liguria.
- The visnaga cactus was big in the US Southwest once. As an ingredient in candy, of all things.
- Breeding filberts in the US.
- Tomato 2.0.
- And a bunch of other crops American farmers and breeders are having to adapt to climate change.
- And not just that, they have to deliver better nutrition too.
- Eat what you want, sure. But think what that means for climate change.
- Principles for GAIN engaging with the private sector (in all its diversity) on nutrition. Could be applied to engagement on climate change, I suppose, and crop diversity conservation for that matter. My question, though, is: runaway train, or Titanic?