Nibbles – Page 37 – Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

October 7, 2021

Nibbles: True to the Land, Marcapata Ccollana, Yield Systems

Book on 65,000 years of Australian food.
Many thousands of years of agrobiodiversity protected in Peru.
But who needs all that when we have AI to phenotype wheat spikes in the field.

October 5, 2021October 5, 2021

Nibbles: Wild potato, Pottery & food, Maltese, Denisse, Feeding Ourselves, Species concept

Ancient potato.
Ancient pottery.
Ancient dog breed?
Oldish botanical illustrations.
Old argument: diversification or specialization?
Even older argument: what’s a species?

October 1, 2021October 1, 2021

Nibbles: Genebanks everywhere

Genebanks on the BBC.
A genebank for the Kahnawa’kehró:non.
A genebank for Maharashtra.
A (grapevine) genebank genotyped.
A (potato) genebank used.
A new tool for (coconut) genebanks.

September 28, 2021September 27, 2021

Nibbles: Ancient Levant, Guinness cherry, NBPGR, Maize in Africa

More than milk and honey.
A very large cherry.
A very large genebank.
Let them eat sorghum, Zambian president says.
That’s not an option for the Hopi.

September 24, 2021

Nibbles: Pasta al forno, Polynesian dispersal, Ryan Phelan talk

More evidence that some food staples are going to be in trouble.
Samoa to Rapa Nui in 400 years. But the Americas before that? Mash up with banana, taro and sweet potato next.
TED talk on genetic rescue.

1. Ancient farmers didn’t have to wait for the genetic diversity that made domestication possible. They selected from variation already present in wild plants, including the ancestors of rice and maize. Domestication was as much about spotting (or happening upon) useful differences as creating new ones.
2. English colonists in America called Indigenous dogs “wolves,” revealing as much about colonial perceptions as about the animals themselves. This history of Indigenous dogs shows how unfamiliar animals were classified through peculiarly European ideas about wildness.
3. Austria is bringing forgotten apple varieties back to life. Saving old varieties in genebanks is one thing: getting people to grow, sell and eat them is another, but it can be done. Or at least tried.
4. Jordan’s olive-oil heritage centres on traditional varieties such as Nabali and ancient Rumi trees, but most production is consumed locally, leaving exports limited and making provenance, cultivar and harvest date important indicators for buyers. Compare and contrast with Austrian apples.
5. Small island developing states have distinctive food cultures and ingredients, but face particular challenges in building sustainable and resilient food systems. FAO’s A Taste of SIDS explores the connections between island food, biodiversity and culinary heritage. Nice to see diversity within crops considered, though a few local variety names would have been nice.
Published on October 21, 2026