- China rehabilitates its grasslands.
- Not content with that, China breeds a new edible lily.
- Not sure what food group lilies are in, but farmers are growing more fruits and vegetables, it seems.
- Still not resting on its lilies, China breeds climate-smart potatoes.
- No doubt CIP and its genebank is helping with that.
- There’s a new book on Vavilov and his genebank. He knew a thing or two about potatoes.
- Ghana is totally on board with the whole genebank thing. And the Dutch are helping.
- Genebanks should hook up with small- and medium-sized enterprises for nutrition. What, not large ones?
- Genebanks also need nice education films on seed production.
- Friend-of-the-blog Colin Khoury interviewed on In Defence of Plants podcast.
- Luxury hotels and restaurants hook up with UNESCO to protect biodiversity. Vavilov would have been so proud.
Nibbles: Tree seeds, Tepary beans, USDA trials, Seed Savers Exchange, China genebank, Nepal indigenous crops, Giant yams, Brogdale, Old apples, AI taxonomy, FEED database, IPBES Nexus report, Business & biodiversity
- Collecting tree seeds properly and respectfully is not easy.
- No word on how easy it is to collect tepary beans respectfully.
- Helping the USDA with their germplasm evaluations, on the other hand, is a breeze. Any tepary beans?
- Seed Savers Exchange makes conserving seeds look easy. Spoiler alert: it isn’t.
- It seems to be very easy to open new national genebanks in China.
- Farming is easier in Nepal with indigenous crops.
- Giant yams don’t look very easy to grow, but that’s not stopping some dedicated Indian women.
- It’s pretty easy — and fun — to visit the United Kingdom’s National Fruit Collection.
- Someone mention apples? Loammi Baldwin knew a thing or two about them.
- It’s going to get easier to identify plants. It says here.
- If you’re looking for interventions or policies to shift diets towards being healthier and more sustainable, your job just got a little easier.
- Likewise if you think the crises of biodiversity loss, water and food insecurity, health risks and climate change should be tackled together.
- Yes, even if you’re a business trying to manage your biodiversity risk you have a right to have it easier. Start by being respectful when climbing trees?
Wild strawberries and other Nordic resources
NordGen is running a great series of weekly webinars on crop wild relatives conservation. You can find recordings of the past three on their website, but I can’t figure out how to sign up for future ones.
LATER: Thanks to Sara for her comment providing the link you’ll need to sign up for future webinars.
Brainfood: Heraclitus, Cocoyam, Pollen, Dry chain, DSI, Global Biodiversity Framework
- Will a plant germplasm accession conserved in a genebank change genetically over time? Sure, change is inevitable, but it can be minimized, and some can be accepted.
- Cocoyam (Xanthosoma sagittifolium (L.) Schott) genetic resources and breeding: a review of 50 years of research efforts. Conventional breeding, based on inducing flowering, is possible, but will require more international exchange of germplasm. I hope someone is saving the seeds.
- Pollen banking is a critical need for conserving plant diversity. Even if it changes genetically over time.
- Applications of dry chain technology to maintain high seed viability in tropical climates. You’ve got to dry your seeds fast and hard. Probably your pollen too, come to that.
- Harmonize rules for digital sequence information benefit-sharing across UN frameworks. The big question is, should there be a single trigger point for monetary benefits, or separate ones for each treaty? At least the sequences do not change over time. But what about if the accessions from which they are derived do?
- Involving citizens in monitoring the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. Yes, let’s get citizens to help us monitor all that change.
Brainfood: EU landraces, EU GIs, Citizen fruit scientists, Nordic potatoes, Czech wheat, German wheat, Wild Brassica collecting, Chinese & European soybeans, Italian goats
- Landrace in situ (on-farm) conservation: European Union achievements. Lots of organizations and farmers are conserving landraces in Europe, in lots of ways, and pretty successfully, but the most sustainable way to do so would be to decrease barriers to their marketing, in particular in the context of organic agriculture.
- An assessment of the implementation of the EU policy for conservation varieties from 2009 to 2023 and its relationship to Geographical Indications. Few European GIs use conservation varieties (i.e. landraces), but this should, and probably will, change.
- New citizen science initiative enhances flowering onset predictions for fruit trees in Great Britain. Imagine doing this for European landraces.
- Genetic markers identify duplicates in Nordic potato collections. Ooops, some alleged landraces in European genebanks turn out to be old improved varieties.
- Curation of historical phenotypic wheat data from the Czech Genebank for research and breeding. You need data on all those landraces if people are going to use them. Citizen scientists might help, I guess.
- Trait-customized sampling of core collections from a winter wheat genebank collection supports association studies. But you need to use that data to create subsets first, and you can do that in lots of different ways, for different purposes: let the German genebank show you how.
- Collecting Mediterranean wild species of the Brassica oleracea group (Brassica sect. Brassica). Even in Europe some gap-filling collecting is still necessary.
- A comparison of Chinese wild and cultivar soybean with European soybean collections on genetic diversity by Genome-Wide Scan. Even breeders in the soybean center of diversity might find material from Europe’s genebanks useful.
- Can Sustainability and Biodiversity Conservation Save Native Goat Breeds? The Situation in Campania Region (Southern Italy) between History and Regional Policy Interventions. Conservation livestock breeds, anyone?