A great story about urban agriculture in – of all places – Los Angeles mentions corn, sunflowers, chayote, onions, tomatoes and alache, which I had to look up. But I would guess the diversity is staggering, at both species and variety levels. Imagine all those Latino families living the American dream asking their relatives back home for seeds…
Expert witness
I think WWF came up with a really powerful idea with their “climate witnesses.” These are ordinary people around the world who WWF has asked to act as spokespeople, a kind of warning system for climate change, and advocates for action. One is an old Kikuyu cattle-keeper, who spoke up at the recent climate change conference in Nairobi about the changes he has been experiencing. Makes me wonder if we in the agrobiodiversity community could link up with WWF and use this existing network to highlight specifically how climate change is affecting crops and crop wild relatives. Or do we perhaps need “genetic erosion witnesses” of our own?
Let them eat pizza
A French “prince” has turned his castle into a Conservatoire National de la Tomate. He recommends Seeds of Diversity, with its database of 19,000 cultivars of vegetables, fruit, grains, flowers and herbs, as a source of heirloom tomato seeds.
Fluorescent fungi
A number of bioluminescent mushrooms have recently been discovered in Brazil. Is there anything this group of organisms is not capable of?
Fancy fungus
That’s some valuable biodiversity!