- IFAD paean to neglected crops.
- BBC tribute to enset.
- Threnody to unsustainable kava.
- Hymn to a pot of ancient maize.
- Toast to a new museum of food in the UK.
- Jeremy’s duet with June Hersh on yoghurt.
- Scientific American epic on the European Neolithic.
- Rhapsody on saving wheat from climate change.
- Collection of important tree species from ICRAF.
- Panegyric to a clove tree.
- A eulogy for monoculture?
Brainfood: Racism, Writing, QMS, Andean ag, Root breeding, Apple microbiome, Manihot phylogeny, Mukodamashi millet
- Overcoming racism in the twin spheres of conservation science and practice. Imagine.
- Getting accepted – Successful writing for scientific publication: a Research Primer for low- and middle-income countries. See above.
- A Performance Management System for Long-Term Germplasm Conservation in CGIAR Genebanks: Aiming for Quality, Efficiency and Improvement. Say what you do, do what you say, have someone verify it, correct it, improve it. Then repeat.
- Quinoa, potatoes, and llamas fueled emergent social complexity in the Lake Titicaca Basin of the Andes. Who needs maize, am I right?
- Harnessing root architecture to address global challenges. Something else for breeders to scour genebanks for.
- Evidence for host–microbiome co-evolution in apple. The genetic patterns in the endophytic microbiome of 11 wild and cultivated apple species mirrors the phylogenetic relationships among the species.
- Phylogenomic analysis points to a South American origin of Manihot and illuminates the primary gene pool of cassava. At least five wild species have contributed diversity to cassava. No word on microbiomes.
- Genetic Identification of the Local Mukodamashi Varieties of Foxtail Millet (Setaria italica (L.) P. Beauv) in Japan. Mukodamashi means “deceiving husband” and the legend is that when a wife makes dumplings from this millet variety, the husband mistakes them for rice cakes because the grains are white and sticky. Thing is though, it’s not just one variety.
Brainfood: Genetic diversity, Pointy maize, Diversification, Hybrid yeast, African yam bean, Urbanization, Wild tomato ecogeography, Wild banana seeds, Seed systems, Phytosanitary, Rematriation, Cowpea development, ABS
- The crucial role of genome-wide genetic variation in conservation. Don’t fetishise functional variation.
- The Ancient Varieties of Mountain Maize: The Inheritance of the Pointed Character and Its Effect on the Natural Drying Process. Case in point?
- Diversification for enhanced food systems resilience. Do fetishise diversification.
- Restoring fertility in yeast hybrids: Breeding and quantitative genetics of beneficial traits. Well, that’s one way to diversify. Mules next?
- Predictive genotype-phenotype relations using genetic diversity in African yam bean (Sphenostylis stenocarpa (Hochst. ex. A. Rich) Harms). From 93 IITA accessions to a handful of good ones for the fetishes of seed and/or tuber yield.
- Genetic resources management, seed production constraints and trade performance of orphan crops in Southern Africa: A case of Cowpea. Could maybe fetishise cowpea a little more?
- Urbanization and agrobiodiversity: Leveraging a key nexus for sustainable development. What’s the opposite of fetishising? Demonising? Ok, don’t demonise urbanisation then. Gosh I hope I’m using these words correctly…
- Edaphoclimatic Descriptors of Wild Tomato Species (Solanum Sect. Lycopersicon) and Closely Related Species (Solanum Sect. Juglandifolia and Sect. Lycopersicoides) in South America. We may be in danger of fetishising ecogeography.
- Banana seed genetic resources for food security: Status, constraints, and future priorities. Half of banana wild relatives are not in genebanks at all. Not that we want to fetishise crop wild relatives, but that seems a lot.
- Regulating Seeds—A Challenging Task. How do we avoid fetishising neither formal nor informal seed systems?
- The phytosanitary risks posed by seeds for sowing trade networks. The case for robust phytosanitary measures in global forage seed trade networks. No need to fetishise them though.
- The value of agrobiodiversity: an analysis of consumers preference for tomatoes. Consumers fetishise heirloom tomatoes to the tune of an additional €0.90 per kilo.
- Dynamic guardianship of potato landraces by Andean communities and the genebank of the International Potato Center. Communities don’t fetishise rematriated landraces, but that doesn’t matter.
- Facing the Harsh Reality of Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) Legislation. The dangers of fetishising ABS. Or is it demonising?
Brainfood: Archaeological edition
- Do Pharaohs’ cattle still graze the Nile Valley? Genetic characterization of the Egyptian Baladi cattle breed. Maybe.
- Lessons on textile history and fibre durability from a 4,000-year-old Egyptian flax yarn. Pharaohs’ flax still being woven though.
- Wild cereal grain consumption among Early Holocene foragers of the Balkans predates the arrival of agriculture. Which made it easier to adopt cultigens when farmers arrived.
- The origins and spread of domestic horses from the Western Eurasian steppes. Horses from the lower Volga-Don spread all over Eurasia starting around 2000 BC along with equestrian material culture.
- The Japanese wolf is most closely related to modern dogs and its ancestral genome has been widely inherited by dogs throughout East Eurasia. Kinda too bad it’s extinct, but maybe it can be reconstructed?
- Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene sites in the montane forests of New Guinea yield early record of cassowary hunting and egg harvesting. Amazing. From looking at eggshells.
- Hallstatt miners consumed blue cheese and beer during the Iron Age and retained a non-Westernized gut microbiome until the Baroque period. Amazing. From looking at, well, there’s no easy way of saying it, paleofeces.
Nibbles: Crop change, Chinese chocolate, Food system, Eating local, Heritage wheat, NTFPs, Distinguished ethnobotanist, Pumpkins, Garum recipe, Fermentation, Archaea, NBPGR interview
- IFAD says farmers might need to change crops. Farmers unavailable for comment as presumably they’re too busy changing crops.
- Case in point: China moves into cacao.
- The food system is at the centre of all our ills. But I’m not sure switching from maize to sorghum is going to cut it.
- And neither will watching those food miles, alas.
- Example of a farmer changing crops, watching food miles and diversifying the food system.
- I suppose we could also just eat more trees?
- We’ll need ethnobotanists for that.
- And there’s clearly plenty of pumpkins out there.
- Maybe garum would go well with some of those NTFPs, and pumpkins.
- Do they teach garum at Fermentation School?
- Whoa, I did not realize archaea in the vertebrate gut feed on bacterial fermentation products.
- And let’s not forget to put everything in genebanks before it’s too late so we have a chance to do all of the above.