- Symbiotic fungus can help plants and detoxify methylmercury.
- Very attractive book on the wild tomatoes of Peru. I wonder if any of them eat heavy metals.
- There’s a new dataset on the world’s terrestrial ecosystems. I’d like to know which one has the most crop wild relative species per unit area. Has anyone done that calculation? They must have.
- Iran sets up a saffron genebank. Could have sworn they already had one.
- The Natural History Museum digs up some old wheat samples, the BBC goes a bit crazy with it.
- Paleolithic diets included plants. Maybe not wheat or saffron though.
- Community seedbanks are all the rage in Odisha.
- Seeds bring UK and South Africa closer together. Seeds in seedbanks. Not community seedbanks, perhaps, but one can hope.
- Can any of the above make agriculture any more nutrition-sensitive? I’d like to think yes. Maybe except for the mercury-eating fungus, though you never know…
Nibbles: Svalbard Global Seed Vault, Hemp collection, Community seedbank, Turkish national genebank, Olive park, Pillas, CIMMYT genebank
- A Canadian take on Svalbard.
- A Texas take on hemp conservation.
- A Zimbabwean take on community seedbanks.
- A Turkish take on genebanks.
- An Italian take on olive conservation.
- A Cornish take on heirloom oats.
- A Chinese take on the CIMMYT genebank.
Nibbles: Indian millets, Coconut breeding, Bhutan seed systems, Bangladesh gardens, Innovea coffee breeding network, Israel and NZ genebanks
- India decides to export millets. How about conserving them?
- India releases a new coconut. How about new millets?
- Bhutan BOLDly studies its seed systems. Maybe even including some millets.
- Bangladesh revives floating gardens. No millets.
- Coffee gets an international breeding network. Do millets have one?
- Israel‘s and New Zealand‘s genebanks make the news. How about millet genebanks?
Nibbles: Ancient oils, “AGRA”, Seed libraries, Tonka bean, MGIS, Wild Arachis
- Remember the book on ancient Mesopotamian cookery in the last Nibbles? Ok well here’s a website on Vegetable Oils And Animal Fats In Early Urban Societies Of Syro-Mesopotamia. Esoteric? Moi?
- To come back down to earth, you could always read this hot take on the AGRA rebranding.
- Couldn’t be more down to earth than community seedbanks, aka seed libraries.
- The seeds of Dipteryx odorata will make your head float.
- The latest news from the Musa Germplasm Information System may float your boat. It did mine. But I’m into esoterica, didn’t you know?
- Nothing esoteric about wild peanuts any more.
Nibbles: Trevor Williams, ICRISAT genebank, Irish seedbank, Domestication video, COP27 genebank webinar, Pasturelands, Big Food report, Mesopotamian cooking
- The late Prof. Trevor Williams, one of the pioneers of genebanking, in the news.
- The President of Niger visits a genebank, makes the news.
- Irish seedbanking in the news.
- Dr Mark Chapman on how to study domestication using seeds in genebanks.
- COP27 webinar on using seeds in genebanks for climate change adaptation.
- Pasturelands: sometimes genebanks are not enough. Though even then I bet they can help.
- Big Food still not doing much to support genebanks, despite reports such as this.
- A book on ancient Mesopotamian cooking. Who can think of the best link to genebanks?