- Viewpoint: COVID-19 and seed security response now and beyond. Think before you spread seeds around.
- Integrated crop-livestock system with system fertilization approach improves food production and resource-use efficiency in agricultural lands. Integrating livestock in soybean production is good for the amount of energy produced per unit of nutrient applied, if that’s what floats your boat.
- Holistic agricultural diversity index as a measure of agricultural diversity: A cross-sectional study of smallholder farmers in Lilongwe district of Malawi. An interesting way of measuring overall farm diversity. But is there a link with dietary diversity?
- Dietary diversity scores, nutrient intakes and biomarkers vitamin B12, folate and Hb in rural youth from the Pune Maternal Nutrition Study. Dietary diversity is linked to better micronutrient status. But is there a link with genetic diversity?
- Evaluating surrogates of genetic diversity for conservation planning. There’s nothing quite as good as neutral markers, alas.
- Phenotypic diversity assessment within a major ex situ collection of wild endemic coffees in Madagascar. Never mind the species or genetic diversity, look at the trait variability.
- Understanding cassava varietal preferences through pairwise ranking of gari‐eba and fufu prepared by local farmer–processors. Landraces are sometimes better than improved varieties.
- Do the importations of crop products affect the genetic diversity from landraces? A study case in garlic (Allium sativum L.). Apparently not, surprisingly enough.
- Overcoming barriers to the registration of new varieties. DUS needs genomics. But what about registering landraces? Do we need a completely separate system for that?
- Legal geographies of kava, kastom and indigenous knowledge: Next steps under the Nagoya Protocol. One approach implementing Nagoya at the community level. But is it scalable?
- New evidence on the earliest domesticated animals and possible small-scale husbandry in Atlantic NW Europe. There was a long period of contact between local hunter-gatherers and incoming farmers, resulting in a transitional farmer-herder stage.
Nibbles: Community seed bank, Seed system video, MGIS, Svalbard, Mainstreaming NUS
- Indigenous communities can have genebanks too.
- That would make them part of the informal seed system.
- Meanwhile, in the formal sector, the banana international genebank’s information system gets a graphical upgrade.
- And the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, as formal as they come, gets an exhibition centre.
- Orphan crops are called orphan because they are in general better served by the informal than the formal seed system.
Nibbles: Svalbard, Amazon fires, China genebank, Gardening, CPVO
- Nice genebanks mashup from the always-excellent Mongabay.
- Analyzing social media to understand how forest governance is perceived. I want to do it for genebanks now…
- …Genebanks such as China’s wild plants genebank, for example.
- Thomas Fairchild was a genebanker of sorts 300 years ago.
- Once genebanks have been used by breeders, and varieties released (at least in Europe), you’ll be able to find them in the CPVO Variety Finder. I’m sure Fairchild would be impressed.
Nibbles: Soil day, Gold Rush orchards, Bogota heirlooms, Geographical indications, Coffee industry, Plant Treaty
- Soil diversity is important too, FAO says.
- There’s (agricultural) gold in them thar hills.
- Even the hills of Bogotá.
- Using collective IP rights to protect agricultural and other biodiversity.
- Coffee is 40 years behind other crops, but will business step up?
- More $$$ for the Benefit Sharing Fund.
Nibbles: Tea podcast double, African soil map, Chinese seeds
- Tea, anyone? Jeremy delves into how Brits made tea, and vice versa.
- More tea? Lawrie Taylor looks at the dark side.
- Want to know what the soil is like on African tea farms? Try iSDAsoil. Let the mashing up with crop accession locality data begin…
- Want to know what happened to those other seeds that came out of China?