- China and Pakistan to collaborate on ginger. Including exchange of germplasm, apparently.
- US doubles down on cover crops…
- …and pulses. No word on ginger.
- How Campbell doubled down on tomato breeding.
- Mapping farmland changes in Egypt. From space. Still waiting for that genetic erosion early warning system though…
- Our World in Data does global food. Genetic erosion next? Yeah, just dreaming here.
- Cool free book on Plant Food Processing Tools at Early Neolithic Göbekli Tepe.
- Digitizing a million herbarium specimens in Australia. How many crop wild relatives, I wonder?
- A coconut museum, but on Facebook. And a sort of museum of the plants themselves in India
- How to talk about mezcal using all the right words.
- A paean to the mango.
- Agriculture should be more “probiotic.” Mezcal, coconuts and mangoes would probably help.
- It kind of already is in the Andes.
Nibbles: Seed saving edition
- Seed saving in The Guardian.
- Seed saving in Nigeria.
- More seed saving needed in Zimbabwe.
- Save seeds instead of growing GMO crops? The “debate” continues…
- Is seed saving among the best-bet government interventions to fix our diets? Find out.
- Seed saving on rsmag.com, whatever that is.
- Will the new Oxford nature recovery centre look into seed saving, I wonder?
- Saving baobab seeds in Burkina Faso.
- We need joined-up food system thinking. Starting with seed saving?
Nibbles: Seed saving, Ulu, Diet diversity, Azeri fruit/veg, Tomato breeding, Indigenous farming, AGRA-ecology
- Food security through seed saving in the African diaspora.
- Food security through breadfruit in Hawaii.
- Food security through the dietary diversity of women.
- Food security through preserving fruits and veggies in Azerbaijan.
- Food security through tomato wild relatives.
- Food security through Native American farming practices.
- Food security through agroecology.
Brainfood: Racism, Writing, QMS, Andean ag, Root breeding, Apple microbiome, Manihot phylogeny, Mukodamashi millet
- Overcoming racism in the twin spheres of conservation science and practice. Imagine.
- Getting accepted – Successful writing for scientific publication: a Research Primer for low- and middle-income countries. See above.
- A Performance Management System for Long-Term Germplasm Conservation in CGIAR Genebanks: Aiming for Quality, Efficiency and Improvement. Say what you do, do what you say, have someone verify it, correct it, improve it. Then repeat.
- Quinoa, potatoes, and llamas fueled emergent social complexity in the Lake Titicaca Basin of the Andes. Who needs maize, am I right?
- Harnessing root architecture to address global challenges. Something else for breeders to scour genebanks for.
- Evidence for host–microbiome co-evolution in apple. The genetic patterns in the endophytic microbiome of 11 wild and cultivated apple species mirrors the phylogenetic relationships among the species.
- Phylogenomic analysis points to a South American origin of Manihot and illuminates the primary gene pool of cassava. At least five wild species have contributed diversity to cassava. No word on microbiomes.
- Genetic Identification of the Local Mukodamashi Varieties of Foxtail Millet (Setaria italica (L.) P. Beauv) in Japan. Mukodamashi means “deceiving husband” and the legend is that when a wife makes dumplings from this millet variety, the husband mistakes them for rice cakes because the grains are white and sticky. Thing is though, it’s not just one variety.
Nibbles: Maize landraces, Indian plantain, Indigenous conservation, Slow Food, Design a tomato, Saffron in Vermont
- A Mexican entrepreneur and a Pawnee Keeper of the Seed try to save maize landraces in their different ways.
- Indian farmer tries to save plantain varieties.
- Indigenous conservation will save conservation.
- Alice Walters cannot save the food system. But why not let her try?
- None of the above of them would understand the concept of designing a perfect tomato.
- Saffron is the perfect spice.