- Status and future of seed conservation of threatened plants in the post-2020 era. 21% of threatened plants are conserved in genebanks across 44 countries in Europe and western Asia. Not bad, but not good enough. I wonder how many of those 21% will be of interest to breeders?
- How the international treaty on plant genetic resources for food and agriculture can support effective germplasm exchange: four Colombian case studies. The Plant Treaty can really help a country’s genebanks and breeders drive agricultural development, given half a chance.
- Reconciliation or re-colonization? Critical perspectives on seed banking and colonialism. Indigenous communities need to be careful in collaborating with genebanks and breeders.
- Impacts of climate change on fonio millet: seed germination ecology and suitability modelling of an indigenous West African cereal. Climate change will screw up the germination of fonio in some places, so genebanks and breeders better get cracking.
- Euterpe edulis seed recalcitrance: difficult, yes, but not impossible to genebank. Tricky seed storage behaviour need not deter genebankers.
- Accelerated aging caused diversity and specificity loss in the bacterial communities of Brassica napus seedlings. Genebanks should be careful with their seed aging experiments, because they might screw up the seed microbiome.
- Understanding Biotic Constraints to Taro (Colocasia esculenta) Production in the Derived Savanna and Humid Forest Agroecosystems of Nigeria. Genebanks need seed systems though.
Underselling breeding, and conservation
Crops with massive … importance, clear biological upside, and real demand for better genetics — but a system where breeding remains small, underfunded, and structurally difficult to scale.
What crops, you ask? “Opportunity crops,” perhaps? Fonio, say, or Bambara groundnut, or any number of African leafy vegetables.
Those would have been good guesses, but actually I cheated, so no. The word hidden by the ellipsis is actually “economic,” and the quote comes from a Reddit post on coffee breeding. 1
That of course makes the observation even more amazing. As the Reddit poster goes on to point out:
We’ve built a ~$100B global industry that depends on plant genetics… while seemingly allocating only a negligible fraction of that value to actually improving those genetics.
And, I would add, allocating an even more negligible fraction to conserving those genetics (despite the fact that there’s a pretty solid strategy for how to do that). Which goes for opportunity crops too, come to think of it.
Yes, win-win-win diets are possible
Happy to second the sentiment expressed in this snippet from Jeremy’s latest newsletter. And there are so very many more equally interesting snippets to be found across the previous 299 issues, going back almost exactly 11 years. Congrats, Jeremy!
I heartily applaud scientists who take the trouble to create a more accessible version of their research results, and not only because it saves me the effort. I’m very happy, then, to refer you to two versions from two of the authors of Strategies for achieving healthy, sustainable, and equitable dietary transitions, recently published in Science.
The paper “connects the behaviors of consumers, producers, and the midstream actors who influence both supply and demand. It then proposes solutions based on syntheses of evidence across major intervention domains”.
Jess Fanzo and Marc Bellemare — both no stranger to the podcast — have made it easier for the rest of us to understand the complexities and difficulties involved.
Brainfood: Diversification edition
- Agrobiodiversity for Climate Resilience: A Systematic Review of Yield Stability, Pest Regulation, and Nutrition Outcomes. “…agrobiodiversity emerges as a no-regrets adaptation strategy that strengthens resilience, sustains productivity, and supports nutrition, while creating co-benefits for ecosystems and livelihoods.”
- Global impacts of increased undervalued crop production on environmental, economic, and nutrient outcomes. It’s even good for emissions. No regrets indeed. But who’s going to do drive all this diversification?
- Impact of a homegardening intervention on crop diversity: results from a cluster-randomized trial in Bangladesh. Homegardeners maybe?
- National genebanks as agents of change for supporting farmers’ crop diversification. Oh, I know who else can help.
- Expanding the genetic diversity of chickpeas from the Ukrainian genebank to new agricultural systems. Even in a war zone.
- The genetic landscape of Pacific taro: diversity, population structure, and strategic germplasm management. Even in paradise.
- Influences of territorial conflicts on local crop diversity in a campesino community in the Colombian Caribbean. Because war is bad for agrobiodiversity. No word on the effect of paradise.
- Reviewing assumptions around the giant maize Jala landrace locally known as maíz de húmedo: the importance of local knowledge for the in situ conservation of agrobiodiversity. On top of everything, agrobiodiversity can even be iconic.
Nibbles: Crop mapping, Climate change impacts, Rice cheese, Andean blueberry, Rare apples, Hungarian genebank, Old seed collection
- AI doesn’t recognize tropical agriculture very well.
- So presumably it can’t easily be used in assessing climate change impacts in agricultural heritage systems? FAO has some ideas on how to do it.
- Maybe rice heritage systems can be used to make cheese.
- I bet Andean blueberry (Vaccinium floribundum) goes great with rice cheese.
- But if not, heritage apples will probably do.
- The Hungarian genebank is hoping to inject heritage grains into non-heritage agricultural systems. AI and FAO unavailable for comment.
- Maybe AI can help with the mystery of this old seed collection at the Natural History Museum, London.