Mainstream

Nibbles: GenResBridge, Food for All, CIAT genebank, Seed for the Future, Vavilov book, Seeing Pastoralism, S Sudan floods, Sustainable diets, Elon Musk, CePaCT, NZ genebank, Wild potato, Peyote

Europe gets a genetic resources strategy at last. Rejoice.
Book on how international organizations could, should, would transform agriculture.
Meanwhile, in Cali…
BBVA and El Celler de Can Roca collaborate on forgotten foods documentary, Seeds for the Future.
A novel about Vavilov? Well, why not.
Exhibition on pastoralism.
Visual essay on floods in South Sudan.
Why not throw money at food security though? I mean, just see above, right?
Beyond the EAT-Lancet diet. S. Sudan unavailable for comment.
The SPC genebank curator waxes lyrical.
Not far away, New Zealand cryopreserves some of its native plants.
The latest on the Four Corners potato. I hope it’s in cryo…
…and that it doesn’t go the way of the peyote.

Q&A with an archaeobotanist looking into the domestication history of maize and gourds.
Q&A with the curators of the University of California, Riverside Citrus Variety Collection.
Q&A on the shea tree genome.
CIP’s potato cryobank. There’s probably a Q&A somewhere too.
Snippets of a review of an interesting-sounding book about the almost-forgotten Pignolo grape.
Snippets of the Indigenous ecological knowledge used by traditional agriculturalists in India.
A more systematic approach to documenting and protecting Indigenous ecological knowledge from Australia.

China makes progress in its agrobiodiversity census.
Osage orange history deconstructed: “horse high, hog tight, and bull strong.”
Maize history deconstructed.
Using AI to assess the vulnerability of plant species. Vulnerability of landraces next?
Not sure about landraces, but maybe pasturelands?
Mapping food systems to save them.

Organic Seed Growers Conference, February 4–11, 2022. Don’t miss it.
Mapping biodiversity from space. Agrobiodiversity next? I wish.
How to cite Indigenous knowledge. Including in germplasm databases? I wish.
An old Czech barley variety from an Austrian genebank makes a comeback in craft brewing. I dunno though, I need to look into this a bit more.
Demonizing livestock is unjust. But will probably continue.

University of Chicago Press series on food & drink: Edibles.
An Indian farmer who’s really into tuber diversity is featured in The Hindu.
“We are a public access seed bank – not a commercial seed company. You will find that our presentation of information and how you access our seedbank is a bit different from ordering seeds from the usual on-line commercial enterprise.”
Italian university maps agrobiodiversity.
Maize data in USDA’s GRIN database includes Indigenous group.