Category: Mainstream

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Nibbles: SeedLinked, Heritage Seed Library, HarvestPlus, Enset, EBI, Saharan/Sahelian flora, Pollen, Food & climate, Food prices, Moonraker, Svalbard eats, Devex does seeds, CGRFA ABS survey

  1. SeedLinked: an app to source cool vegetable seeds. And more.
  2. Want to become a variety champion for the Heritage Seed Library? Where’s the app though?
  3. A compendium of evidence on the efficacy of biofortification from HarvestPlus. Jeremy surely available for comment?
  4. Kew celebrates efficacy of enset conservation in Ethiopia.
  5. Not sure if the Ethiopia Biodiversity Institute is in on that celebration.
  6. Some of Ethiopia is Sahelian, no? Anyway, here’s a nice piece on the forgotten, but important plants from that neck of the woods.
  7. We should all celebrate pollen banking much more.
  8. Celebrity chef worried about the effect of climate change on food.
  9. Including food prices. I dunno, maybe pollen banking will help.
  10. Or maybe even a lunar repository.
  11. Speaking of food prices, I bet this Svalbard restaurant is not cheap. Maybe there’s a nice view of the Seed Vault though. Who needs the moon?
  12. The latest Devex newsletter has lots of stuff on food prices and prizes and (non-lunar) seed vaults.
  13. Do you use any of the above for research and development? The FAO Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture would like to hear from you.
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Nibbles: Forest seed collecting, Colombian maize, Türkiye & China genebanks, Community seedbank trifecta, Wheat breeding, Rice breeding, Bean INCREASE, WorldVeg regen, UK apples, Rangeland management

  1. How to collect forestry seeds.
  2. Whole bunch of new maize races collected in Colombia.
  3. The Türkiye national genebank in the news. Lots of collecting there. Though maybe not as much as in this genebank in China.
  4. But small communities need genebanks too. Here’s an example from Ghana. And another from India. And a final one from the Solomon Islands.
  5. Need to use the stuff in genebanks though. Here’s how they do it in the UK. And in Bangladesh. And in Europe with the INCREASE project, which has just won a prize for citizen science. And in Taiwan. Sort of citizen science too.
  6. Collecting apples in the UK. Funny, the canonical lost-British-apple story appears on the BBC in the autumn usually. Kinda citizen science.
  7. Or we could do in situ conservation, as in this South African example… Just kidding, we all know it’s not either/or. Right? Probably a good idea to collect seeds is what I’m saying. Could even do it through citizen science.
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Nibbles: SPAM2020, Pullman genebank, Svalbard, Olive plague, Rice diversity, Vanilla threat, Gum rockrose, VACS demand, AI double, Food & climate change

  1. The latest version of the SPAM global crop area distribution model is out. You can play with it here.
  2. Some bullet points on the USDA’s National Plant Germplasm System outpost in Pullman.
  3. Yes, the above references Svalbard, as does this piece on Spanish tomatoes.
  4. Pity we can’t put olives in Svalbard, but there’s a another way to protect olive diversity.
  5. A breakdown of rice colour diversity. A lot of this stuff will be in Svalbard, with any luck.
  6. Vanilla will also need attention.
  7. But gum rockrose seems to be taken care of, at least in Bulgaria. It’s what you make Holy Chrism with.
  8. So there’s bound to be demand for it, at least in some quarters. Unlike for other opportunity/orphan/neglected crops, but GAIN is on it.
  9. And if all else fails there’s always AI, be it to fight pests and diseases or find cool plants out in the jungle.
  10. Why does all this matter? Because of the climate F-word.
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Nibbles: Seed info, Potato 101, Coffee 101, Rice repatriation, Iraq genebank, Use or lose, Teff breeding, Micronutrients, Agrobiodiversity, Plant a Seed Kit, WorldVeg to Svalbard, Seed Health Units

  1. Eastern and Southern Africa Small-scale Farmers’ Forum (ESAFF) launches SEED GIST, a quarterly repository of seed literature.
  2. A fun romp through potato history.
  3. A fun romp through coffee history.
  4. Hong Kong gets some rice seeds back from the IRRI genebank.
  5. No doubt Iraq will get some seeds back from the ICARDA genebank soon.
  6. Genebanks are only the beginning though.
  7. Breeding teff in, wait for it, South Africa.
  8. The possible tradeoffs of an environmentally friendly diet.
  9. IIED on the value of agrobiodiversity. Includes an environmentally-friendly and/or nutritious diet.
  10. Slow Food’s Plant a Seed Kit is all about agrobiodiversity and healthy diets. What, though, no teff?
  11. WorldVeg knows all about seed kits, and safety duplication.
  12. Gotta make sure those seeds are healthy, though. Here’s how CGIAR does it.