Information

August 28, 2025August 28, 2025

How to revive your landraces

How can we help get humble heirloom varieties of the humble potato back into cultivation? Well, fortunately, Potato News Today ¹ has a handy step-by-step guide, which I reproduce verbatim below:

Start with a story you can legally sell. In Europe/UK, use the conservation-variety route; in North America, lean on certified seed suppliers and Indigenous stewardship agreements.
Source clean, traceable stock. CIP and the U.S. Potato Genebank maintain indexed, disease-tested material; combine with reputable local seed houses.
Pilot with chefs and specialty retail. Early-season launches with menu credit and a farm feature move the needle.
Package the provenance. PDO/PGI examples like Jersey Royal and Papas Antiguas de Canarias show how origin, agronomy, and micro-harvest rituals create value.
Engineer storage for shape and use. Follow the curing/holding guidance above.
Ride the calendar. Tie launches and media to the International Day of Potato (30 May) or to local potato festivals.

Sounds pretty sensible, and applicable to other crops as well, I suspect, with a little tweak here and there.

The article also has a list of case studies. This doesn’t include any examples from Italy, but coincidentally a recent paper describes just such a thing. Which maybe points to something that is missing from the Potato News Today playbook, and that is having lots of interesting characterization and other data on your heirloom landraces handy to help get them ready for prime time.

August 27, 2025August 27, 2025

GRIN-U tackles breeding

The latest GRIN-U newsletter points to a really nice series of infographics from the USDA’s Plant Breeding Coordinating Committee that I didn’t know about. But there’s a whole lot more. Explore away.

July 8, 2025July 8, 2025

Brainfood: EcoregionsTreeFinder, Microbe niches, Herbarium phenology, Green Status Index of Species Recovery, Feral pigs, Trade & biodiversity, African cereal self-sufficiency, Plant protection, Ugandan seed systems, Grasspea breeding, Indigenous knowledge

EcoregionsTreeFinder—A Global Dataset Documenting the Abundance of Observations of > 45,000 Tree Species in 828 Terrestrial Ecoregions. The right native tree for your ecoregion of choice. Which, given lots of the stuff below, is good to know. Oh, and BTW, there’s also the Agroforestry Species Switchboard.
Modelling the distribution of plant-associated microbes with species distribution models. Would be cool to mash up with the above one day.
The promise of digital herbarium specimens in large-scale phenology research. Something else you can use herbarium specimens for, if you’re careful.
A global indicator of species recovery. The Green Status Index of Species Recovery, no less. Herbaria surely involved again.
Valorization of feral pigs in the tropics, from the genetic characterization to the re- domestication. Wish there was a Green Status Index of Breed Recovery.
Global staple food trade exacerbates biodiversity loss: a network perspective. Soybeans are messing with the Green Status Index of Species Recovery of lots of species, I suspect.
Prospects for cereal self-sufficiency in sub-Saharan Africa. Prospects for self-sufficiency are not bad, but will require yield increases if the Green Status Index of Species Recovery is not going to take a hit.
Protecting crops with plant diversity: Agroecological promises, socioeconomic lock-in, and political levers. Agroforestry and diverse landscapes are best for pest control, but cultivar mixtures are worth a try too. Wonder what they will do for cereal self-sufficiency in Africa. I lot, I bet, if given a chance.
The dynamics of crop diversity and seed use in the context of recurrent climate shocks and poverty: Seasonal panel data evidence from rural Uganda. Farmers use crop diversity to cope with climate change, and wealthy farmers do it better. Pest control too, maybe?
Understanding Farmer Preferences to Guide Crop Improvement: The Case of Grasspea in Ethiopia. Breeders should provide jam today and jam tomorrow.
Crop diversity trends captured by Indigenous and local knowledge: introduction to the symposium. Indigenous and local knowledge can help you keep track of all of the above.

June 11, 2025June 11, 2025

Modified ecosystems and the conservation of crop diversity

A new global assessment of the state of terrestrial ecosystems has just been published, focusing on the extent of human modification due to “industrial pressures based on agriculture, forestry, transportation, mining, energy production, electrical infrastructure, dams, pollution and human accessibility.” ²

As is my wont, I tried to find a form of the data that I could shoehorn into Google Earth, but I failed. Fortunately GIS guru Kai Sonder of CIMMYT was able to snip out a kml file of overall human transformation as of 2020 covering Kenya — don’t ask me how. But thanks, Kai. I put on top of it genebank accessions from Kenya classified as wild or weedy in Genesys.

I don’t know quite what to make of this. The wild populations seem to have been mainly collected in areas that in 2020 were very highly affected by human activity. But is that good or bad?

It could be good — in a sense — if the high degree of human transformation means that the original populations are not there any more. ³ Phew, good thing they were collected! On the other hand, it could be bad if the concentration on easily accessible and modified areas means that the genetic diversity currently being conserved is not representative of what’s out there.

What do you think?

But of course what I really want is a version of this which focuses on agricultural areas and is updated in real time. Yes, a perennial favourite here: a real early warning system for erosion of crop diversity.

June 9, 2025

Another opportunity for opportunity crops

Time to register!