Nibbles

June 29, 2007

IITA cores its yams

A core collection has been identified for West African yams.

June 28, 2007August 11, 2009

Cattle and biodiversity

Cattle grazing sustains plant diversity in Dutch dune ecosystems.

June 28, 2007

Hot is cool

Great opportunities for spices.

June 28, 2007June 28, 2007

Rooibos and climate change

The wild relative might offer some additional options to rooibos tea farmers in South Africa as climate change hits.

June 28, 2007September 24, 2007

Biofuels in the UK

Sunflower in the UK? Yep, and then some!

1. Frafra potato is having a moment: an indigenous West African tuber, adored locally and mostly ignored by science, out looking for its big commercial break.
2. Speaking of breakthroughs, this bus driver found his own, swapping the wheel for seed multiplication and turning five acres into a livelihood, proof that sometimes the missing link in a seed system is just someone willing to do the unglamorous middle bit well.
3. Which is, per Farming First, precisely Africa’s problem at scale: only 2.5% of smallholder seed in Sub-Saharan Africa comes from formal seed companies, so a few million more bus-driver-style multipliers wouldn’t hurt.
4. Meanwhile in the Balearics, the opposite direction of travel: the local seed bank is expanding to rescue tomatoes, onions and broad beans, and is looking for farmers willing to take them back.
5. Indigenous fruit trees in Malawi turn out to fight malnutrition and biodiversity loss at once. Happy coincidence?
6. Getting those trees into the ground well needs the same unglamorous groundwork as any good crop seed system: a Mongabay commentary argues that restoration campaigns skipping Indigenous and local seed knowledge are optimising for trees planted, not trees that survive.
7. And once you’ve got the saplings in the ground, you might want to monitor how they’re doing: enter Bruno, a pushcart rigged with mobile phones that can collect field data. And not just for breeders.
8. Finally, proof that not all genetic-resource hunting needs a genebank: Brussels brewers are getting people to comb the city for wild yeast, because the raw materials for a proper lambic turns is hanging around in urban trees.
Published on September 10, 2026