Mainstream – Page 63 – Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

June 23, 2021June 30, 2021

Maize comic in the offing

Well this looks super-cool.

June 23, 2021June 23, 2021

Nibbles: Harvest time, Wheat evaluation, Olive diversity, Maize museum, MAKEathon, Community seed banks

Why bulls and cereals go together.
Finding out which old wheats go together with good bread.
How in situ and ex situ conservation can come together for olives in Catalonia.
60 maize landraces come together in a cool display.
Coming together for African yam bean, starting on 7 July.
How national genebanks and community seed banks can come together.

June 22, 2021June 21, 2021

Nibbles: Legume breeding, Hemp cultivation, Soybean breeding, Acacia taxonomy

Freeing legumes in Africa.
Hemp used to be much more free in Italy.
The unfree history of soybeans in the US.
Taxonomists are not free to rename acacias at will.

Nibbles: Linguistic diversity, Filipino rice, Cashew, Brassica domestication

The need to save languages.
Saving rice diversity in the Philippines.
Cashews saving farmers in Guinea-Bissau.
Understanding Brassica rapa diversity in order to save it.

June 7, 2021June 7, 2021

Nibbles: Apples, Millets, Miniatures, Transhumance, Ag origins, Seeds

Rescuing apples in Appalachia.
Rescuing millets in India.
Painting mangoes in India. I suspect they don’t need rescuing.
Transhumance in Georgia.
It was the need for clothes, not food, that caused all the above.
And yes, seeds are alive.

1. Ancient farmers didn’t have to wait for the genetic diversity that made domestication possible. They selected from variation already present in wild plants, including the ancestors of rice and maize. Domestication was as much about spotting (or happening upon) useful differences as creating new ones.
2. English colonists in America called Indigenous dogs “wolves,” revealing as much about colonial perceptions as about the animals themselves. This history of Indigenous dogs shows how unfamiliar animals were classified through peculiarly European ideas about wildness.
3. Austria is bringing forgotten apple varieties back to life. Saving old varieties in genebanks is one thing: getting people to grow, sell and eat them is another, but it can be done. Or at least tried.
4. Jordan’s olive-oil heritage centres on traditional varieties such as Nabali and ancient Rumi trees, but most production is consumed locally, leaving exports limited and making provenance, cultivar and harvest date important indicators for buyers. Compare and contrast with Austrian apples.
5. Small island developing states have distinctive food cultures and ingredients, but face particular challenges in building sustainable and resilient food systems. FAO’s A Taste of SIDS explores the connections between island food, biodiversity and culinary heritage. Nice to see diversity within crops considered, though a few local variety names would have been nice.
Published on October 21, 2026