Networking

Nibbles: Ruby chocolate, Wild Cicer, Lost rices, Breeding beans, Pawpaw, Pink pineapple, Indigenous livestock, Aquaculture, Coffee Atlas, Egyptian beer, Tequila shortage, Crop diversity

Yes, even Europe has community seed banks, and a website to tell you all about them. Here’s where they are:

A lot more than I thought.

Blockchain for ABS touted at Davos. The Economist is there.
But will it be at the World Potato Congress? I’m betting no.
But for sure some Germans will be.
Martha Stewart will be in Svalbard.
Crops for the Future was On the Menu.
Culinary Breeding Network is in Hawaii. Lucky them. But would it have killed them to provide a link?
I want to be in Lebanon.
There are a lot of pretty seeds in Paul Smith’s new book.

The Economist jumps on the genomics-for-orphan-crops bandwagon.
But is phenomics more important?
And seed systems, don’t forget seed systems…
Some of those orphan crops may get an International Day, if India has anything to do with it.
Immortelle is as orphan as they come, but maybe not in Croatia any more.
Amaranthus never really went away, not in Mexico.
Persimmon, meanwhile, is being adopted by the snack industry in the US. But the Japanese are way ahead.
Some think yerba mate is not orphan enough.
Is yam an orphan. It depends on what your definition of is is.
Avocado is the opposite of orphaned in Mexico. It is spoiled rotten.
Many orphan crops are women’s crops. Case in point: enset.
Orphan is a relative term, and reversible.
Exhibit B: sweet potato.
People often take their orphan crops with them. Even in antiquity.
Coconut is fast becoming an orphan in Tanzania.
With 32 cultivars available to grow in Louisiana alone, nobody can say lettuce is an orphan.
Mexico and Brazil collaborate on crop diversity conservation. Including orphan crops?
One thing that is probably not a huge priority for orphan crops is their wild relatives. Just saying.
Anyway, we’re going to need all the orphan crops we can get if James Cameron’s titanic vegetarian utopia is to come true.