- Seed security response during COVID-19: building on evidence and orienting to the future. First and foremost, support farmers save their seeds.
- Blended finance for agriculture: exploring the constraints and possibilities of combining financial instruments for sustainable transitions. How about supporting farmers save their seeds?
- Dynamic conservation of genetic resources: Rematriation of the maize landrace Jala. Genebanks helping farmers save their seeds.
- Molecular Parallelism Underlies Convergent Highland Adaptation of Maize Landraces. Early farmers saving their maize seeds in the Mexican highlands eventually helped out farmers in the Andean highlands. With GIF goodness.
- Open access to genetic sequence data maximizes value to scientists, farmers, and society. How will it help farmers save their seeds?
- Applying Knowledge of Southern Seed Savers to Community-Based Agricultural Biodiversity Conservation Practice. The people saving and swapping seeds in the Ozarks respond to films, need how-to manuals, and could be a tad more diverse. I suspect this is not just true in Arkansas.
- Characterization of wheat germplasm conserved in the Indian National Genebank and establishment of a composite core collection. Farmers trying to save their seeds rejoice.
- Heritable epigenetic diversity for conservation and utilization of epigenetic germplasm resources of clonal East African Highland banana (EAHB) accessions. Hey, it’s not just seeds. Methylation patterns follow geography but not morphology in a genetically uniform group of vegetatively propagated cultivars.
- Blind spots in global soil biodiversity and ecosystem function research. Not now, soil biodiversity, I’m too busy dealing with seeds.
- Narrow genetic base shapes population structure and linkage disequilibrium in an industrial oilseed crop, Brassica carinata A. Braun. Landraces of Ethiopian mustard and improved lines cluster in separate groups, but overall diversity is low. Not enough seeds saved, perhaps?
- High-Throughput Genome-Wide Genotyping To Optimize the Use of Natural Genetic Resources in the Grassland Species Perennial Ryegrass (Lolium perenne L.). Only possible because of saved seeds.
- Presence of resveratrol in wild Arachis species adds new value to this overlooked genetic resource. I hope we’ve saved enough seeds.
- Main Challenges and Actions Needed to Improve Conservation and Sustainable Use of Our Crop Wild Relatives. It’s quite difficult — and insufficient — to save the seeds of wild species, but we should do it nevertheless.
- Influence of diversity and intensification level on vulnerability, resilience and robustness of agricultural systems. Why we should all save seeds.
Nibbles: Quinoa, Another quinoa, Old Apple Tree, “Anglo-Saxon” ag, SADC landraces, Record whisky, “Shipped but Not Sold”
- The results of the 2nd International Quinoa Research Symposium are up on YouTube.
- I was today years old when I learned there’s a quinoa in Taiwan.
- REALLY old English Greening apple tree dies. Sad: “When you reach your new home in the wilderness, should you ever think of me, plant these seeds.” Not all gloom, though, so do read the whole thing.
- Coming conference on the medieval agricultural revolution.
- Results of a dialogue on the registration of farmer varieties in SADC. Long way to go, alas.
- Talk about adding value to agricultural products! But were weird local barley landraces harmed in the making of this whisky?
- High value agricultural products, among other things, were used as gifts by 18th century merchants in Yemen. Not whisky, though, right? Well, actually…
Nibbles: Gumbo ingredients, Seed library, Pomology award, Breeding presentation, Seed storage
- Not-so-suffering sassafrass.
- Another seed library, this one in Canada.
- Fruit breeder Dr David Cain gets 2020 Wilder Medal from American Pomological Society.
- PowerPoint on plant breeding. Dr Cain unavailable for comment.
- Which species can you bank anyway? With video goodness. Which I agree is not all that unusual these days, but still.
Nibbles: Yunnan mushrooms, Torres Is bananas, Boxgrove, Gluten trends, Apple rootstocks, USDA horticulture job
- There’s a sort of mycological culinary hotspot in Yunnan… Yeah, I thought that too.
- Signs found of old banana cultivation in Australia. Well, kinda. As in not as old as in PNG, and not mainland Australia.
- Really, really old horse butchery site in southern England excavated. When the Brits ate horses. Well, kinda.
- New wheat is pretty much like old wheat, gluten-wise at least.
- Breeding better apple rootstocks at USDA. A hitherto somewhat neglected aspect of apple genetic conservation and improvement.
- Speaking of USDA, here’s another job.
Wanainchi wanaenda shagz
Jeremy’s latest newsletter expounds eruditely on, among other things, some recent articles on durian, Australian grasses and a heirloom pepper that we Nibbled here way too briefly. Always worth a read. Jeremy also gave me the go-ahead to reproduce here his piece on coping with Covid-19 in Kenya, which reminded me, as if I needed reminding, of what my assorted nephews and nieces are going through. Not to mention the mother-in-law. Here it is.
Deep insights from Oyunga Pala, a Kenyan currently in the Netherlands, prompted by how Covid is encouraging many Kenyans to return from the cities to small rural land holdings where they hope to create a basis for food security. Pala contrasts what he knows of small-scale agriculture in Kenya with what he is learning and what he sees all around him in the Netherlands.
Small-scale farming in Kenya accounts for 75 per cent of the total agricultural output and meets 70 per cent of the national food demand, so I know I am part of an important constituency. The challenge of my generation, those with access to land under 3 ha in size, is to craft a new farming philosophy that is built on progressive ideas through investigation, dialogue and exposure to alternative sources of knowledge grounded in the African experience. We need more philosophers and fewer technical experts to redefine what we call sustainable farming. Africa’s own knowledge systems and philosophy in agriculture are held in the memory of a generation that is dying out and dismissed as backward. Yet my grandmother’s practices resonate with those of emerging natural farming systems around the world that espouse new ideas grounded in the environmental, social and historical realities of the non-western world.
Seems to me to echo what other people are saying about AGRA, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa.
Well worth your time, as are the articles Pala links to. I know nothing about Elephant, the online publication, but it looks like a good source of interesting news.