- 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.
Brainfood: History edition
- Phylogenetics and evolution of Digitaria grasses, including cereal crops fonio, raishan and Polish millet. The history of wild Digitaria goes back 2–6 million years.
- Biogeography of Crop Progenitors and Wild Plant Resources in the Terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene of West Asia, 14.7–8.3 ka. This is what the distribution of crop wild relatives looked like in West Asia 10 thousand years ago or thereabouts. No Digitaria, but plenty of other stuff.
- Ancient use and long-distance transport of the Four Corners Potato (Solanum jamesii) across the Colorado Plateau: Implications for early stages of domestication. At roughly the same time, a couple continents and an ocean over, a local potato species was being processed outside its rage. Was it cultivated? Do the math.
- State formation across cultures and the role of grain, intensive agriculture, taxation and writing. And a few thousand years later, there were domesticated grains, states, and taxes. In that order. Do the math.
- The Archaeology of Olive Oil Production in Roman and Pre-Roman Italy. Pretty sure the Romans had a state and taxes. They also had domesticated olives.
- Wines of Fire and Earth: Exploring the Volcanic Terroirs of the Canary Islands – a Case Study. No Romans on the Canaries, but plenty of vines.
- Black Death Land Abandonment Drove European Diversity Losses. The Romans and their successors, with their cereals, olives and grapes, were surprisingly good for landscape floristic diversity. The Black Death, not so much.
- The decades-old fantasy of enhancing pigeonpea productivity. Well that’s a bit of a letdown after a 6 million year journey.
- Past, present and future of local crop evolution. That’s because we needed Indigenous people and local communities to show us the way.
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.
Crowdsourcing crop diversity, and information
A couple of crowd-sourcing initiatives caught my eye.
First, the good people at the COUSIN project want to expand genebank collections of wild relatives of wheat, barley, lettuce, brassica, and peas in Europe. And they have a pretty good idea where the collecting needs to be done. Think you can help? Check out the call for proposals.
And from a bit further south comes a plea on LinkedIn from Chris Jones of the ILRI genebank. He needs help getting stuff out of the genebank rather than into it.
As part of the ‘low-methane forages’ project, funded by the Gates Foundation and the Bezos Earth Fund, we have been screening the methane emission intensity of a range of forage accessions, in vitro, from the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) genebank. The aim is to screen approximately 10% of the accessions held in our genebank and, to date, we have assessed 155 herbaceous legumes towards this goal, including several of our lablab accessions. From these, we have identified two accessions of interest. The methane emission intensity of accession #14447 was 27.7 ml/g total digestible dry matter (TDDM), 43% lower than the highest ten legumes measured so far, and methane emission intensity of accession #14458 was 33.8 ml/g TDDM, 30% lower. So, assuming that similar differences in methane emission intensity are realised in vivo (and that is no guarantee), the preferred candidate seems obvious. However, in our field plots #14458 produced 60% more biomass than #14447, which was an ‘average’ yielder. This higher level of production should be attractive to farmers who currently struggle to incorporate much in the way of legumes in their feed rations. So, which one would you prioritise?
I’ve added the links to the Genesys entries for the accessions in questions for people who want a bit more data to base their decision on. You can provide your input on Chris’ post, or right here and I promise to pass it on.
Brainfood: Genetic erosion edition
- Crop diversity trends captured by Indigenous and local knowledge: introduction to the symposium. A whole symposium on how Indigenous knowledge reveals widespread loss of traditional crops and landraces, and the increasing adoption of high-yielding varieties, driven by economic, political, climatic, and sociocultural forces.
- Landraces and climate change: global trends through the lens of political agroecology. Structural forces (markets, policies) and unequal power in seed systems drive the decline of traditional varieties and marginalize Indigenous and local knowledge about crop diversity; climate change not so much.
- Smallholders farmers defying global genetic erosion: documenting 60 years of peanut landrace conservation in a South American diversity center. Well, not everywhere. I wonder why…
- Farmers hold diverse and connected values towards crops. The global literature shows that farmers value crops not just for yield and profit, but for a wide range of interconnected economic, agronomic, ecological, social, and cultural reasons that vary across farming systems, and recognizing these diverse values can improve research and policy on agricultural sustainability and crop diversity. So that’s why.
- Towards a holistic framework: Exploring the relationship between seed security and food security dynamics among smallholder farmers in Chimanimani, Zimbabwe. The link between smallholder seed and food security is complex, non-linear, and shaped by socio-economic, environmental, and policy factors, showing that having secure access to seed does not automatically translate into food security and that context-specific, systemic approaches are needed to understand and strengthen both.
- The local crop varieties (farmers’ varieties) registration system in Nepal: Past, present and future. It may all be very complex, but legally recognizing and protecting farmer-developed landraces within a formal seed regime can empower farmers, conserve agrobiodiversity, and strengthen seed system resilience.
- Leveraging Earth Observation Technologies to Monitor Essential Genetic Diversity. Nah, we can do it from space.