Check out how the U.S. National Herbarium is digitizing its specimens. Wild.
Nibbles: Pacific genebank, IPBES report, New mangoes, British apples, Greek landraces, Fonio, Space seeds, Macadamia cryo
- New Zealand supports SPC regional crops and trees genebank in a big way.
- Some of those trees are wild species that contribute to food security, and more must be done to conserve them.
- Some trees are crops of course, like mangoes, and scientists are doing their bit for them in the Philippines.
- Wait, isn’t it too early for the usual BBC saving-the-apple story? Usually comes in the autumn.
- Who needs genebanks when you can inscribe landraces in a National Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage.
- Maybe try it with fonio next?
- Or just send seeds into space?
- Maybe including macadamia, or is space not cold enough for them?
I see your podcasts, and raise you a clutch of videos
US CWR website ready for prime time
The data behind the recent paper Crop wild relatives of the United States require urgent conservation action, led by friend-of-the-blog Colin Khoury, is online in beta.
Do check it out, and fill out the user survey. Kudos to the first person to identify the crop wild relative in the map reproduced above. Orange shows the ex situ conservation gap. Genesys records just 3 accessions for this species.
New crop of crop maps crops up
Data viz wiz Erin has a bunch of excellent new maps of crop distributions in the USA over on her website. The data come from USDA Quick Stats, but her maps are way cooler. This, for examples, shows very strikingly what a powerhouse of agricultural biodiversity California is. Though I guess southern Texas comes close.
