Brainfood: CC & crop diversity, Dietary Species Richness, CC & banana, European genebank representativeness, Effective Population Size, VarScout, Borlotti bean diversity, Oaxacan? Green Dent, Sorghum mucilage, Gut bacterial diversity

Brainfood: Andean chefs, Tricot, Enset ploidy, Minor livestock, NUS meals, Cocoyam breeding, Millets in India, Brazilian fruits, Indian fruits

Nibbles: Agrobiodiversity, HealthyDiets4Africa, Warwick genebank, NPGS trifecta, Florida potatoes, On farm, Guatemalan community seed banks, Welsh black oats, WorldVeg genebank, Turkish olive genebank, Citrus genebank, Orchard of Flavours, Piper diversity, Ancient Egyptian food, Chocolate & world history, Ancient DNA & breeding

  1. What has agrobiodiversity ever done for us? Kent Nnadozie of the Plant Treaty lays it out.
  2. Michael Frei of the HealthyDiets4Africa project doesn’t need it laid out.
  3. Neither do the people who awarded a prize to Charlotte Allender of the UK Vegetable Genebank.
  4. What has the US National Plant Germplasm System ever done for anyone? The Guardian, the NY Times and NPR News lay it out. I guess someone in D.C. needs it laid out, but will it make any difference?
  5. Everyone: Potatoes in Florida! Breeders: No problem. NPGS: You called?
  6. Here’s The Guardian again, but this time thinking it is making the case for not putting seeds in the fridge, whereas in fact it’s making the case for the complementarity of ex situ and on-farm conservation.
  7. Speaking of on-farm conservation, here’s a couple of pieces on community seed banks in Guatemala.
  8. Speaking of on-farm conservation, here’s the heart-warming story of Welsh organic farmer Gerald Miles.
  9. Meanwhile, the World Vegetable Centre opens a new genebank.
  10. And Türkiye hosts an international, no less, olive genebank.
  11. And genebanks can be so beautiful, like works of art. Former Tate Modern director Vicente Todolí lays out his citrus samples. I wonder what he could do with olives.
  12. Botanic gardens are beautiful and often act a little bit like crop genebanks. Here’s an example from Portugal I stumbled onto recently, I forget how.
  13. You know what I’d like to see? An international pepper genebank, that’s what. No, not the kind that might be in those Guatemalan community seedbanks or the WorldVeg genebank. This sort of pepper. Piper pepper.
  14. I bet the ancient Egyptians had pepper. Egyptian archaeologist Mennat-Allah El Dorry lays out what else they had.
  15. Maybe you could lay out world history using pepper. You can definitely do so using cacao and chocolate.
  16. No, not using ancient DNA, but actually

A pressing victory

Jeremy was thrilled — thrilled I tell you — at some recent news from Irish Seed Savers Association. And, frankly, so was I. It’s all in his latest newsletter.

Thrilled to see that the apple juice produced by the Irish Seed Savers Association took the Community Food Award at the Irish Food Writers Guild shindig last week. ISSA put together and looks after the National Collection of Heritage Apple Trees on its organic farm near Clare. The winning apple juice celebrates the diversity of the orchard and serves as a reminder both of the history of Ireland’s apples and ISSA’s commitment to sustainability.

If you would like to know more, the ETP archives contain two episodes on the apple collection and the work of the Irish Seed Savers Association, which may explain my enthusiasm.

Digging up the pig

I’m sure you enjoyed Jeremy’s fascinating conversation with Jordan Rosenblum on how the pig and the eagle diverged as the history of Jewish dietary law and custom played out. Which means you’d probably welcome another helping of Prof. Rosenblum. Well, you’d get that, and much more, in the excellent brief summary of the deep history of the animal — the pig that is, not the eagle — in the Levant coincidentally just out in Archaeology Magazine. Prepare to be surprised:

…the inhabitants of the earliest cities of the Bronze Age (3500–1200 b.c.) were enthusiastic pig eaters, and that even later Iron Age (1200–586 b.c.) residents of Jerusalem enjoyed the occasional pork feast.