Nibbles: Ancient grains, Small millets, Wheat, Kelp genebank, Mongolian breeds, Pumpkin seeds, Bioversity & CIAT, Tree history, Cool maps, Business & biodiversity

  1. Make Me Care About…ancient grains.
  2. Not enough? Here’s more.
  3. Wait, does wheat count?
  4. Make Me Care About…kelp.
  5. Make Me Care About…rare livestock breeds. In Mongolia. Jeremy unavailable for comment.
  6. Make Me Care About…pumpkins.
  7. Make Me Care About…Bioversity International…and its Alliance with CIAT.
  8. Make Me Care About…old writing about trees.
  9. Make Me Care About…the World.
  10. Make the Private Sector Care About…biodiversity, nature and landscape restoration.

Brainfood: Pollinator evolution, Pollinator diversity, Livestock, Yak milk consumption, Poultry in situ conservation, Soil stress, Self-domestication, Natural history collections

Nibbles: Robert Chambers, Zero Hunger, China genebank, Spanish bacteria, Harnessing diversity

  1. There’s a celebration of the thinking of Robert Chambers over at IDS Bulletin. He’s been advocating for participation in development and the importance of Indigenous knowledge, among other things, for 50 years.
  2. The Center on Global Food and Agriculture has a report out called “Defining the Path to Zero Hunger in an Equitable World” which basically tries to add humanitarian assistance to the old food-climate-biodiversity nexus. Crop diversity is nowhere to be found among the “catalyzing ideas,” but one of those is investing in “force multipliers,” and that includes agricultural research and development. Participatory agricultural research and development, presumably?
  3. Meanwhile, China has collected 124,000 crop diversity samples.
  4. And a Spanish microbiologist has collected 3,600 bacteria.
  5. The PNAS Special feature: Harnessing crop diversity, organized by Susan McCouch, Loren Rieseberg and Pamela Ronald, got a nice write-up in the latest Plant Science Research Weekly. But what would Robert Chambers say? Anyway, should I do a special Brainfood on it? Let me know in the comments, as the cool kids say.

Brainfood: Genomics for conservation and use edition

Brainfood: Why measure genetic diversity?