Neglected species

Nibbles: KC Bansal, Mike Jackson, Spain strawberry genebank, Ho-Chunk maize, Heritage varieties, Roman apples, Hazelnut breeding, Old rye, Serbia grapevine herbarium, Horse domestication, Mt Vernon fruits, Worldwide Day of Botanical Art, Pre-colonial African agriculture

Prof. KC Bansal, who used to run the Indian national genebank, gets a much-deserved UNESCO honour.
Friend-of-the-blog Dr Mike Jackson on running a rice genebank. UNESCO honour for him too?
Spain’s strawberry genebank gets its 15 minutes.
University and Native American nation collaborate on regenerating heritage corn varieties.
The pros and cons of heritage varieties, according to an American farmer.
Did the ancient Romans have heritage apples?
Beautifully written piece on the use of heritage varieties — and much else besides — in breeding hazelnuts in the US. If you only read one of these Nibbles, read this one.
Old shipwrecked rye seeds may end up in whiskey. Best place for them.
Old Serbian grapevine herbarium samples should stay right where they are.
Old horses most certainly did not stay where they were. But where was that exactly?
Not sure where old bottled fruit from Washington’s estate will end up. The DNA lab maybe, like those Serbian grapevines?
There’s going to be a Worldwide Day of Botanical Art on May 18, 2025. Rejoice.
Decolonizing food insecurity in West Africa.

Collecting tree seeds properly and respectfully is not easy.
No word on how easy it is to collect tepary beans respectfully.
Helping the USDA with their germplasm evaluations, on the other hand, is a breeze. Any tepary beans?
Seed Savers Exchange makes conserving seeds look easy. Spoiler alert: it isn’t.
It seems to be very easy to open new national genebanks in China.
Farming is easier in Nepal with indigenous crops.
Giant yams don’t look very easy to grow, but that’s not stopping some dedicated Indian women.
It’s pretty easy — and fun — to visit the United Kingdom’s National Fruit Collection.
Someone mention apples? Loammi Baldwin knew a thing or two about them.
It’s going to get easier to identify plants. It says here.
If you’re looking for interventions or policies to shift diets towards being healthier and more sustainable, your job just got a little easier.
Likewise if you think the crises of biodiversity loss, water and food insecurity, health risks and climate change should be tackled together.
Yes, even if you’re a business trying to manage your biodiversity risk you have a right to have it easier. Start by being respectful when climbing trees?

A systematic literature review on the impact of climate change on the livelihoods of smallholder farmers in South Africa. Things look bad, but crop and livestock diversity (among other things) can help. If only they can get out to farmers I guess.
Reconciling conservation and development requires enhanced integration and broader aims: A cross-continental assessment of landscape approaches. Correction, I meant out into the landscape.
Towards gender-transformative metrics in seed system performance measurement: insights for policy and practice in Sub-Sahara Africa. How do you know if crop diversity will be able to get into those farming landscapes? You need these gender-transformative metrics. Things like the number of community seed banks serving women and youths, for example.
Cowpea grain sales by women and men traders in local markets of Senegal. Women seed traders need help scaling up. Maybe community seed banks could help?
Promoting new crop cultivars in low-income countries requires a transdisciplinary approach. Maybe women seed traders could help.
An experimental approach to farmer valuation of African rice genetic resources. Farmers are willing to pay as much for landrace seeds as for improved varieties, and those who know about landraces are willing to pay more for their seeds than those who don’t. Good for those women traders to know.
Restoration seed and plant material supply chains are complex social networks. And not just for restoration, I’d say.

A paean to diverse diets is just what we all need.
And another one, from the MIT Technology Review of all places.
Menawhile, there’s only one reference to dietary diversity in the World Bank’s investment framework for nutrition.
Maybe you have to quantify that diversity before you can save it? Now where have I heard that before?
Meanwhile, Europe reports on biodiversity-friendly farming practices. Does that include the biodiversity of the actual crops? Perhaps surprisingly, yes!
You want biodiversity-friendly farming practices? Talk to Indigenous people. The Committee on World Food Security (CFS) has launched an e-consultation on “Preserving, strengthening and promoting Indigenous Peoples’ food and knowledge systems and traditional practices for sustainable food systems.”
There’s diversity in asparagus too.
Genebanks can help with those biodiversity-friendly practices, diverse diets and rops and Indigenous practices.
Even big international genebanks.
Even the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.
But some are in trouble.
Though others are coming back.

Will a plant germplasm accession conserved in a genebank change genetically over time? Sure, change is inevitable, but it can be minimized, and some can be accepted.
Cocoyam (Xanthosoma sagittifolium (L.) Schott) genetic resources and breeding: a review of 50 years of research efforts. Conventional breeding, based on inducing flowering, is possible, but will require more international exchange of germplasm. I hope someone is saving the seeds.
Pollen banking is a critical need for conserving plant diversity. Even if it changes genetically over time.
Applications of dry chain technology to maintain high seed viability in tropical climates. You’ve got to dry your seeds fast and hard. Probably your pollen too, come to that.
Harmonize rules for digital sequence information benefit-sharing across UN frameworks. The big question is, should there be a single trigger point for monetary benefits, or separate ones for each treaty? At least the sequences do not change over time. But what about if the accessions from which they are derived do?
Involving citizens in monitoring the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. Yes, let’s get citizens to help us monitor all that change.