Information – Page 4 – Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

Agricultural biodiversity conference and survey

A couple of quick announcements today that I don’t want to get lost in Nibbles.

First, there’s an International Conference on Agrobiodiversity going on in Nepal. I just found out about it, but it’s hybrid, so you can still join.

Second, if you’re an expert on potatoes or sweet potatoes, consider taking this survey from CIP.

April 9, 2024April 9, 2024

Brainfood: Food shift, Food footprint, Periodic Table of Food, Nutritious food, Diverse food, Food seed kits, Food meta-metrics

Food matters: Dietary shifts increase the feasibility of 1.5°C pathways in line with the Paris Agreement. Go flexitarian.
Biodiversity footprints of 151 popular dishes from around the world. Go flexitarian?
Periodic Table of Food Initiative for generating biomolecular knowledge of edible biodiversity. Unclear if flexitarians have the best molecules.
Environmentally protective diets may come with trade-offs for micronutrient adequacy. More sustainable may mean less nutritious. Flexitarians unavailable for comment.
Market engagement, crop diversity, dietary diversity, and food security: evidence from small-scale agricultural households in Uganda. Market access and crop diversification are both good for dietary diversity and food security. The ultimate flexitarianism.
Sustainability of one-time seed distributions: a long-term follow-up of vegetable seed kits in Tanzania. Now watch flexitarians demand an even playing field.
Developing holistic assessments of food and agricultural systems: A meta‑framework for metrics users. One framework to rule all of the above.

March 26, 2024March 25, 2024

Nibbles: VACS, FAO forgotten foods, African roots, Hopi corn, Adivasis rice, Sustainable farming, Llama history, Vicuña sweaters, Portuguese cattle, Mexico genebank, NZ genebank, Bat pollination, Eat This Newsletter, WEF

More on the US push for opportunity crops.
Oh look there’s a whole compendium on African opportunity crops from FAO.
Many of them are roots and tubers.
For the Hopi, maize is an opportunity crop.
For the Adivasis, it’s rice.
And more along the same lines from Odisha.
Llamas were an opportunity for lots of people down the ages.
…and still are, for some.
Portugal eschews llamas for an ancient cattle breed.
I bet Mexico’s genebank offers some amazing opportunities.
And New Zealand’s too.
Let’s not forget bats. Yes, bats.
Jeremy’s latest newsletter tackles turmeric, pepper and sweet potatoes, among other things.
And the best way to frame all of the above is that the World Economic Forum wants governments to ban people from growing their own food because that causes climate change.

March 12, 2024March 19, 2024

Nibbles: Indian millets, Indian rice, Neolithic bread, Andean potatoes, UAE genebank, Niger onions, Lentil domestication, Italian rice, Sea cucumber

The trouble with millets. Because there’s always room for a Star Trek allusion.
Growing heritage rice varieties in Goa. With hardly any trouble, it seems.
Really, really old bread. And more from Jeremy.
Breeding company and CIP collaborating to save potato diversity in the Andes.
Another genebank opens in the Gulf.
The story of Niger’s Violet De Galmi onion. Or is it Niger’s?
The latest crop to be called humble is the lentil.
New varieties may help save risotto, but better water management will probably have to feature too, I suspect. Otherwise lentils could stand in I suppose.
In the end, though, maybe we should all just cultivate sea cucumbers.

Brainfood: Landrace threats, Heritage areas, Bean erosion, Rice restoration, Cassava redundancy, Commercialization, Peanut network, Podolian cattle

Towards a practical threat assessment methodology for crop landraces. Basically red listing for landraces.
Preserving traditional systems: Identification of agricultural heritage areas based on agro-biodiversity. First places to apply the above?
Genetic erosion within the Fabada dry bean market class revealed by high-throughput genotyping. Would have been nice to apply the above before doing this study.
Restoration of the traditional high-altitude rice variety Dumbja in Bhutan. Highlights one of the problems with monitoring threats to landraces, i.e. how to define the landrace.
Identifying genetically redundant accessions in the world’s largest cassava collection. About half of over 5000 genebank accessions were unique. Easier to recognize cassava landraces I guess.
Agricultural commercialisation among women smallholder farmers in Nigeria: Implication for food security. Will commercialization help preserve some landraces but threaten others?
The groundnut improvement network for Africa (GINA) germplasm collection: a unique genetic resource for breeding and gene discovery. Over a thousand accessions that will be just fine.
An Appropriate Genetic Approach to Endangered Podolian Grey Cattle in the Context of Preserving Biodiversity and Sustainable Conservation of Genetic Resources. The livestock people monitor threat to breeds all the time, it seems.

1. A paean to diverse diets is just what we all need.
2. And another one, from the MIT Technology Review of all places.
3. Menawhile, there’s only one reference to dietary diversity in the World Bank’s investment framework for nutrition.
4. Maybe you have to quantify that diversity before you can save it? Now where have I heard that before?
5. Meanwhile, Europe reports on biodiversity-friendly farming practices. Does that include the biodiversity of the actual crops? Perhaps surprisingly, yes!
6. You want biodiversity-friendly farming practices? Talk to Indigenous people. The Committee on World Food Security (CFS) has launched an e-consultation on “Preserving, strengthening and promoting Indigenous Peoples’ food and knowledge systems and traditional practices for sustainable food systems.”
7. There’s diversity in asparagus too.
8. Genebanks can help with those biodiversity-friendly practices, diverse diets and rops and Indigenous practices.
9. Even big international genebanks.
10. Even the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.
11. But some are in trouble.
12. Though others are coming back.
Published on November 7, 2024