- Blue mangoes.
- Kampot pepper.
- Antarctic flowering plant.
- Sapelo Island red pea.
- Navajo seed data.
Brainfood: Biodiversity works through relationships
- Plant diversity modifies multi-trophic interactions in croplands, grasslands and forests. Increasing plant diversity changes the interactions between plants, herbivores and their natural enemies, but exactly how depends on the ecosystem. Diversification’s pest-suppression magic looks like a farming-specific trick, not a universal law.
- High-resolution carbon and biodiversity mapping shows correlated losses across space and agricultural products. Carbon loss and biodiversity loss from farming turn out to hit the same ground: two-thirds of both concentrated on one-third of agricultural land, with beef and milk alone responsible for 41% of the biodiversity damage. Good news for anyone hoping one policy lever could do double duty.
- Harnessing agri-food system microbiomes for sustainability and human health. Soil to gut, it’s all one network, linking ecosystem function, food production and human health across the entire agri-food system.
- Breeding for beneficial microbial associations. If microbiomes matter that much, why not breed for them? A proposed framework pairs crop traits that recruit good microbes (root exudates, architecture) with soil practices that keep those microbes around, since good genetics on ruined soil gets you nowhere. This means designing crops as participants in ecological networks rather than as isolated organisms.
- Host genetics and social relationships jointly shape fitness-associated microbiome variation in a population of feral horses. Nature’s own microbiome-breeding program: seven years of horse poop from Sable Island shows gut microbes predict winter survival, and related horses share microbes more than chance allows. So the functional unit of adaptation is the animal plus its microbiome.
Biodiversity plans need genebanks
A new FAO policy brief analyses how the 78 revised National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs) submitted to the CBD as of February 2026 treat agrifood systems.
The headline numbers: All 78 NBSAPs that were looked at include agrifood-related targets and actions: 63% of all national targets are implemented through agrifood-related actions, and 36% of all planned actions (4,381 of 12,332) relate to agrifood systems. I think that’s pretty good. Togo tops the list with 80% of its actions being agrifood-related, built around agroecology, sustainable forest management and genetic resource use.
The genetic resources for food and agriculture (GRFA) angle: Of the 55-item typology of agrifood actions tracked, sustainable use of GRFA appears in 74% of NBSAPs and conservation of GRFA in 70%, so both are relatively well covered. But two other pieces of the puzzle lag: inventory and characterization of GRFA sits at only 49%, and access and benefit-sharing of GRFA at 48%. So countries seem to be readier to commit to using and conserving genetic resources than to the maybe less glamorous work of cataloguing what they have or sorting out benefit-sharing arrangements.
The report’s six policy recommendations essentially argue for turning these paper commitments into funded, monitored action, particularly flagging aquaculture, agroecology, rights-based governance, and finance as areas needing a bit of a push.
This is a genuinely thorough policy analysis: 78 NBSAPs coded against a 55-item action typology is real work. But to me it was a little frustrating that twelve pages on agrifood systems never get to grips with the infrastructure that actually keeps agricultural biodiversity — the foundation of healthy agrifood system — alive. Protected areas are mentioned, but there’s nothing specifically on national or international genebanks or on-farm conservation; no Plant Treaty and its access and benefit-sharing system either. I can’t believe none of these were mentioned in the NBSAPs. Conservation and sustainable use of GRFA end up as generic line items in a typology, without much sense of what “conservation” looks like in practice, or who’s actually doing the inventorying that only half of countries have committed to.
It’s solid policy-text analysis, but it stays resolutely, almost defiantly, high-level. It’s a report on commitments on biodiversity in and for agriculture that doesn’t recognize that at least for crop diversity, a global genebank system is being built to help carry them out. Seems a pity.
Nibbles: Amaranth webinar, FARA on fonio, Maslin, Gaza genebank, Nepal seeds, Golden Triangle tea
- New webinar series from the American Society of Plant Biologists will explore how underutilized (or is it opportunity) crops like amaranth can contribute to nutrition, food security and rural livelihoods.
- FARA highlights the tiny West African grain fonio as another crop with potential to improve nutrition, strengthen food systems and create new opportunities for farmers and value chains.
- Taiwanese tea has travelled an unlikely route into northern Thailand. It too was an opportunity crop at one time.
- Ethiopian farmers may have been practising regenerative agriculture for millennia, mixing wheat, barley and other grains in the same field. The Rockefeller Foundation is on it.
- Efforts to restore the Al Qarara Seed Bank in Gaza are offering a small but significant form of agricultural recovery.
- In Nepal, indigenous seeds are losing ground to hybrids, but seed advocates are fighting back.
Mo’ better veggies
In the latest Eat This Newsletter I shared this item, which may be relevant here too.
There’s no shortage of advice that we should all eat more vegetables. They are undoubtedly good for long-term health, and not eating enough vegetables is one of the top five dietary risk factors for disease. And yet, despite all the exhortations and official guidelines, globally around the world people eat only 60% by weight of the vegetables they should. What to do?
The facts above are just some I lifted from a recent paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science: Reversing vegetable biodiversity loss to diversify diets. The authors are a who’s who of agricultural biodiversity and nutrition (many of them familiar to Eat This Podcast). They offer a four-pronged solution, avoiding the whole fruit-vegetable schism with a wise reflection: “Because culinary traditions and nutritional perceptions vary across regions, the specific edible parts and species considered vegetables can differ across cultures”.
Prong 1: Secure vegetable biodiversity for the future. Collect more vegetable diversity and make sure that existing diversity in collections is kept in good working order.
Prong 2: Harness vegetable biodiversity to deliver new varieties. Give farmers, researchers and breeders access to the collected diversity and information about it so that they can improve varieties across the whole range of vegetable species.
Prong 3: Promote vegetable biodiversity to diversify diets. Include more and more different vegetables in meals at school and at home, primarily by linking local growers to school feeding programmes and local markets.
Prong 4: Integrate vegetable biodiversity into policy frameworks for long-term impact. Of course, as night follows day, policy frameworks follow suggestions for action.
The paper is a really interesting read. It emerges from a three-year pilot project in four African countries and summarises a lot of thinking over the years. I’d love to see all countries grasp the four prongs and run with them. But, NGL, and with the greatest respect to the authors, that seems unlikely. Please, prove me wrong.