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August 11, 2026August 11, 2026

The accessions in Spain fall mainly everywhere

My ex-colleagues at the Crop Trust have a very nice animation on the Genesys blog-type thing showing the progress of landrace collecting around the world over the past 125 years.

Do please read the post for the details of how it was done, and some observations on the results.

Here I just wanted to highlight something that has always intrigued me: how did Spain get so heavily collected? It’s really striking how in any global map of collecting localities, Spain looks like a solid carpet, with genebank accessions from practically every nook and cranny. More so than most neighbouring countries, I would say.

Well, it’s a little difficult to be sure because there’s no slider on the animation to take it backwards and forwards at will, but it looks like a burst of collecting first in the 40s, and then some filling in of gaps in the 80s, are responsible for the blanket coverage.

Maybe someone more familiar with the history of germplasm collecting in Spain can explain more.

August 10, 2026August 10, 2026

Brainfood: Avocado history, Brazil commuity seedbanks, Citizen science, Agroecology double, Indigenous knowledge, Turkish seeds, Swiss biodiversity

Ethnobotanical and genetic assessments of Central American avocado landraces reveal novel sources of biodiversity and ancient migration patterns. DNA from landraces, and interviews with farmers, show that people transported and cultivated avocados across the Americas long before European contact, with landraces from lowland Nicaragua and Honduras in particular showing evidence of ancient migration from South America.
The Circle of Seeds: An Ethnography of Seed Guardianship and the Making of Agroecological Futures in Paraná, Brazil. Community seed banks depend on relationships of care, reciprocity and collective labour, especially among women farmers, and not just on knowing how to store seeds properly. Though that helps, clearly.
iNaturalist as a Tool to Improve Agroecological Biodiversity Knowledge: An Ecuadorian Case Study. A citizen science platform can strengthen agroecological biodiversity knowledge, but more efforts are needed to engage farmers.
Are agroecological practices pro-poor? Evidence from smallholder farms in Zimbabwe. Farmers using agroecological practices were generally wealthier and their farms were more diverse in crop and livestock species, but the association between the use of improved practices and diet outcomes was inconsistent.
Regenerative agriculture for dietary diversity and food security in Zambia. Agroecological practices were positively correlated with improved dietary quality and food security, including (though not exclusively) through farm production diversity. No word on the wealth of the farmers involved.
Indigenous Peoples’ knowledge systems and practices for climate survival. Indigenous knowledge systems, including of farmers, offer tested approaches to climate adaptation and resilience that warrant a central place in responses to environmental change.
Guardians of Agricultural Biodiversity: Farmer Perceptions and Sustainability of Local Seed Varieties in Turkish Highlands. Farmers continue to maintain local seed varieties, driven as much by social, cultural and market considerations as by agronomic performance. But they need support.
Religion, spirituality and faith of Swiss farmers in relation to biodiversity-linked farming behaviour. Farmers’ religious and spiritual values can shape biodiversity-friendly management decisions, showing personal belief systems are important in conservation. Even in Switzerland.

August 7, 2026August 7, 2026

Nibbles: Cambridge genebank job, Grapevine roundup, PlantSearch-Accessions, India agrobiodiversity roadmap

Cambridge University Botanic Garden is looking for a Seed Bank Coordinator, with applications closing on 16 August.
Our friend Colin Khoury at the New York Botanical Garden explores the remarkable diversity, evolution and cultural significance of grapevines, highlighting why these climbing plants deserve more attention.
BGCI releases a major update to PlantSearch, expanding access to accession-level data from botanic garden collections worldwide.
India’s National Advisory Board on Management of Genetic Resources outlines a roadmap to strengthen the conservation and sustainable use of the country’s agrobiodiversity. Hopefully botanical gardens are included.

August 6, 2026August 7, 2026

High on taro

The South Pacific nation of Vanuatu is having its National Agriculture Expo 2026 from August 3–7, 2026, on the northern island of Maewo. I’ve scoured the internet for information about this, but all I could find was social media posts, which I won’t link to, but you can find for yourself quite easily. I will, though, share, with thanks, this photo from one of those posts from Facebook. It’s of the 20-metre tower built by the taro farmers of Maewo, showcasing their product. Because it’s amazing.

July 27, 2026July 27, 2026

Brainfood: Mapping edition

Addressing global hotspots of drought-related crop production losses. A crop-specific drought sensitivity metric for 17 major crops finds rainfed production losses of 10% globally under historically observed extremes, enough to feed 2 billion people, with hotspots in the US Midwest, eastern Brazil, the Mediterranean and South Asia. Sustainable irrigation expansion and crop switching could avoid 60% of those losses. No word on varietal change, but I’m sure it would help.
GEM-Forest: A Global satellite EMbedding–based map of forests and tree crops for 2020. Using Google DeepMind’s Alpha Earth Foundation embeddings, this 10 m global dataset classifies forest, non-forest and tree crop areas with 90% accuracy, showing that lightweight classifiers on satellite embeddings ¹ can rival more complex forest-monitoring pipelines built to support things like the EU Deforestation Regulation.
Global distribution of cattle, horses, goats, sheep and buffaloes at 1 km resolution for 2000–2022 based on subnational census data and spatiotemporal machine learning. Harmonizing 55,336 census polygons across 147 countries produces annual 1 km livestock headcount and density layers for five species, letting users track shifting grazing pressure over more than two decades rather than relying on single-year snapshots. ²
A Spatial-Econometric Analysis of Fruit Tree Diversity in Lebanon: A contextual framework for supporting smallholder farmers. How geography, socio-economic conditions and local context shape fruit tree diversity in Lebanon, helping identify where interventions could best support smallholder resilience.
High-resolution mapping of rice cropping pattern, intensity, calendar, and ecosystem type across Southeast Asia. Joins the growing pile of fine-resolution rice products for the region, this one distinguishing not just how many harvests a field gets but which rice ecosystem (irrigated, rainfed, upland) it belongs to. Is which variety is being grown next on the agenda?
Entrenchment of cropping patterns reinforces climate exposure for certain crops in US. County-level analysis of US cropping decisions finds that climate risk has actually risen for some crops (like rainfed soybeans) even as it fell for others, suggesting economic and policy incentives are keeping farmers planted in increasingly climate-mismatched patterns rather than nudging them toward the drought-sensitivity-driven switching the first paper above models.