Category: Mainstream

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Nibbles: GRIN-U, Canadian seeds, Jordan genebank, Green genebank, Millets everywhere, Saving livestock diversity, Sustainable smallholders, Uli Westphal, Eat This Tomato

  1. Lots of new stuff on GRIN-U. Check out the genebank success stories in particular. How many of the things below will be successes? Lots of luck to all of them…
  2. Showcasing seeds in Canada.
  3. Setting up a new genebank in Jordan.
  4. Let’s hope it will be eco-efficient like CIAT’s. Other GROW webinars here. Yes, they’ve started up again.
  5. Embracing millets in southern Africa and India.
  6. Why livestock should not follow the example of Charles II of Spain.
  7. Supporting traditional sustainable farming in Central America.
  8. More on Uli Westphal‘s cool illustrations of crop diversity.
  9. Which include tomatoes. Don’t forget to subscribe to Jeremy’s pod.
  10. And subscribe to the GRIN-U newsletter too while you’re at it!
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Nibbles: New cassava, Community seedbank double, Rwandan beans, Knotweed et al., Seed systems, Adam Alexander, Uruguay genebank, Kelp biobank

  1. There’s a new cassava in town in Kenya.
  2. I wonder if it will end up in a community “seed” bank.
  3. …because they swear by them in Zimbabwe.
  4. Cassava is not the only American crops that’s important in parts of Africa: the cultural appropriation of beans in Rwanda.
  5. Some American crops didn’t make it very far out of America.
  6. Be it beans, cassava or sump/knotweed, what’s needed is a Quality-Declared Seed (QDS) system. Right?
  7. Well you also need someone to go around collecting the stuff in the first place.
  8. But don’t forget to back everything up in Svalbard, like Uruguay is doing.
  9. Well maybe not everything.
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Nibbles: Old olive, Silphion, Heirloom watermelon, Calabrian chili, ICARDA genebank, Jamaica genebank, Tamil community seedbank, Forestry seeds

  1. Really old olive tree in the gardens of the mosque-cathedral of Cordoba is a lost variety.
  2. Long extinct medicinal spice plant not extinct after all?
  3. The next nearly extinct heirloom on our list is a watermelon from Virginia. Who knows, it may originally have been grown in Cordoba or Cyrenaica…
  4. And moving in the opposite direction, a really hot Calabrian chili pepper beats the heat.
  5. The ICARDA genebank is trying to find stuff that will beat the heat too.
  6. Jamaica is looking to beat the heat by establishing some new genebanks.
  7. Tamil Nadu going the community seedbank route, and why not? Jamaica please take note.
  8. An alliance of forestry outfits is pushing for a global seedbank infrastructure to support woodland restoration. Nothing if not ambitious. And much needed.
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Brainfood: Seed boundaries, Open Source Seeds, Chickpea evaluation, Central Asia homegardens, Teff evaluation, Wheat collection rationalization, Resurgent millets, Duplicates software, Cooking up “minor” crops

  1. Constructing Seed Boundaries: Foundation and Evolution of Scientific Conceptions and Practices of Crop Diversity from the Green Revolution to date. We need to put the knowledge, expertise, activities and needs of farmers at the centre of conservation and use of crop diversity.
  2. Open Source Seeds and the Revitalization of Local Knowledge. Open-source seeds is one way we can put the knowledge, expertise, activities and needs of farmers at the centre of conservation and use of crop diversity.
  3. Evaluation of Global Composite Collection Reveals Agronomically Superior Germplasm Accessions for Chickpea Improvement. We need detailed, multi-location, multi-year agronomic evaluation of chickpea diversity to figure out what diversity we should use to give farmers the diversity we think they will need.
  4. Home gardens of Central Asia: Reservoirs of diversity of fruit and nut tree species. We need homegardens.
  5. Data-driven, participatory characterization of farmer varieties discloses teff breeding potential under current and future climates. We need detailed, multi-location, multi-year agronomic evaluation of teff diversity done in collaboration with farmers to figure out what diversity we should use to give farmers the diversity they will need, and what they already have.
  6. Cultural Effects on Sorghum Varieties Grown, Traits Preferred, and Seed Management Practices in Northern Ethiopia. We need detailed, multi-location, multi-year studies of farmers’ sorghum diversity, practices and needs to figure out what diversity we should use to give farmers the diversity they will need, and what they already have.
  7. Metrics for optimum allocation of resources on the composition and characterization of crop collections: The CIMMYT wheat collection as a proof of concept. We could use genotyping and this fancy maths to figure out what to have in our wheat genebank collections so we can then figure out which diversity to use to give farmers the diversity we think they will need.
  8. From marginalized to miracle: critical bioregionalism, jungle farming and the move to millets in Karnataka, India. Forget wheat. We need local food activism. But critical local food activism.
  9. G-DIRT: a web server for identification and removal of duplicate germplasms based on identity-by-state analysis using single nucleotide polymorphism genotyping data. We need this fancy software to get rid of duplicates from our genebank collections so it’s cheaper to maintain them and ensure that they’re always around for people to use to get to farmers the diversity they need.
  10. “Famine Foods” and the Values of Biodiversity Preservation in Israel-Palestine. We need recipes.