- A conference on biodiversity in agri-food systems. Including agrobiodiversity?
- A photo essay about food value chains in India. Including agrobiodiversity?
- A few examples of FAO’s work on how agriculture sustains biodiversity. Including agrobiodiversity.
- An app to track seeds. And therefore agrobiodiversity.
- A warning that 75% of the agrobiodiversity of Morocco’s wheat and barley has been lost in the past 50 years. Ah, so that 75% number is true of something after all. Maybe they could use SeedTracker.
- A reminder that pastoralists guard biodiversity. Including agrobiodiversity.
- A Genesys for weed. Well, I guess it’s agrobiodiversity.
Nibbles: Crop mapping, Climate change impacts, Rice cheese, Andean blueberry, Rare apples, Hungarian genebank, Old seed collection
- AI doesn’t recognize tropical agriculture very well.
- So presumably it can’t easily be used in assessing climate change impacts in agricultural heritage systems? FAO has some ideas on how to do it.
- Maybe rice heritage systems can be used to make cheese.
- I bet Andean blueberry (Vaccinium floribundum) goes great with rice cheese.
- But if not, heritage apples will probably do.
- The Hungarian genebank is hoping to inject heritage grains into non-heritage agricultural systems. AI and FAO unavailable for comment.
- Maybe AI can help with the mystery of this old seed collection at the Natural History Museum, London.
Brainfood: Yield double, NUS double, Wild food plants, NbS, Portuguese genebanks, School meals, Indian nutrition, Nutritional diversity trifecta
- Releasing agriculture from the food security mandate. Research should focus toward sustaining production means and farmer welfare, rather than area productivity.
- Beyond yields: a systems approach is essential for reconciling agriculture and biodiversity. Research should focus toward sustaining production means and farmer welfare, rather than area productivity.
- Underutilized crops for diverse, resilient and healthy agri-food systems: a systematic review of sub-Saharan Africa. Opportunity crops sustain production means and farmer welfare, rather than area productivity.
- Exploring the potentials of neglected underutilized crops (NUCs): an integrative review for developing a sustainable food system model. Opportunity crops sustain production means and farmer welfare, rather than area productivity.
- Prospective of indigenous African wild food plants in alleviation of the severe iron deficiency anaemia in Sub-Saharan Africa. Some wild food plants can sustain welfare.
- Nature-based agricultural practices in the Mediterranean agroecosystems: A meta-analysis of their benefits on crop productivity, soil quality, and biodiversity. 15 ways to sustain production means and farmer welfare, and sometimes area productivity.
- The role of Seed Banks in food systems transitions: the case of Portugal. Genebanks could help sustain production means and farmer welfare, and area productivity too.
- Mainstreaming agrobiodiversity in planet-friendly school meals for children: a scoping review. Opportunity crops and wild food plants in school meals could help sustain the welfare of schoolchildren.
- Spatial association between nutrient deficiency and agricultural diversity in India. Agrobiodiversity could help sustain welfare in whole districts actually.
- Grain zinc, iron and protein concentrations of contemporary wheat cultivars fall short of targets for human health. Agrobiodiversity could help sustain welfare but breeders need to use it.
- Nutritional and Biochemical Diversity in Beans Accessions from Three Phaseolus Species Using Multiomics Characterization. Agrobiodiversity could definitely help sustain welfare but breeders need to use it.
- Genome-wide association study in a lettuce core collection from 811 accessions reveals genetic loci for anthocyanin accumulation and cultivar development. Agrobiodiversity could definitely help sustain welfare and breeders can use it pretty easily.
Unchaining genebanks
Can the food processing industry contribute to the conservation and sustainable use of agricultural biodiversity? Of course it can. Even in genebanks? Sure, why not. There’s no reason beyond a failure of the imagination to think that genebanks can’t participate directly in the food value chain as innovation partners, supporting sustainable products and market differentiation. Too bad there’s not a ton of examples. A pretty good one is NordGen’s partnerships with the food company Oatly. Oatly funded trials of more than 800 oat accessions, generating phenotypic and genomic data that identified traits valuable for taste and processing. The collaboration provided industry with suitable varieties while enriching NordGen’s documentation of its collection. This and a few — too few — other examples can be found in From seed to shelf: Models for integrating agrobiodiversity in food processing activities, from FAO and the Plant Treaty. I hope one day soon the coffee industry wakes up and smell the genebanks.
Nibbles: Online seeds, Yam breeding, Rice genebanks, Indian commmunity seed banks, Sikkim banana, Cassava disease, ICARDA genebank, Tajikistan women
- The perils of dematerialization play out in India.
- Is YamHub dematerialization?
- Rice genebanks in Bangladesh and at IRRI are pretty solid.
- There’s a pretty solid platform for India’s community seed banks.
- I hope Nagaland’s wild bananas end up in genebanks.
- Cassava’s diversity is in multiple genebanks, and that’s a good thing, CBSD and all.
- ICARDA’s genebank back in the Syrian news, though in a good way for once.
- Tajikistan’s women farmers are bringing back crops with not a worry about dematerialization. Or genebanks, it seems.