- The Broad Spectrum Species: Plant Use and Processing as Deep Time Adaptations. Hundreds of plant species, many now forgotten, show up in archaeological assemblages stretching back tens of thousands of years. Exploiting an astonishing diversity of plants was a fundamental human adaptation long before agriculture. And the data was kinda always there.
- Evaluating cultivars for pollinator gardens. Some ornamental cultivars attract more pollinators than the wild plants they were bred from. The relationship between genetic modification through breeding and ecological function is not always straightforward. And I now want to see the descriptor “pollinator attractiveness” in evaluation datasets.
- Chemotypic Diversity and Integrated Metabolic Profiling of Myrtle (Myrtus communis L.) from Mediterranean Turkey. Dozens of different chemical compounds vary dramatically among individual myrtle plants that look much the same to the naked eye.
- Essential oil composition and ethnobotanical survey of male and female Juniperus seravschanica Kom. (Cupressaceae) in Iran. Traditional knowledge and chemical profiling show that juniper male shoots, female shoots and cones each produce distinct blends of essential oils, exposing a surprising layer of sex-linked diversity within a single species.
- Earth Metabolome and Digital Botanical Gardens Initiatives: Chemodiversity Knowledge for Biodiversity Conservation. Millions of plant-produced molecules remain undocumented, forming an invisible dimension of biodiversity. We need global digital infrastructures to catalogue this vast reservoir of chemodiversity before it disappears. Of course we do.
- Herbaria Provide a Valuable Resource for Obtaining Informative mRNA. Decades-old herbarium specimens still contain usable messenger RNA, opening the door to studying historical patterns of gene expression from preserved plant collections.
- The Politics of Open Infrastructures: Power, Governance, and Justice in Digital Knowledge Practices. Data infrastructures may be open, but control over them often is not. And that probably goes even more for the unusual sorts of data represented by the above papers than for the crop diversity data we normally deal with here.
Brainfood: Diversity of Oats, Cotton, Sugarcane, Rice, Amaranthus, Vegetables, Agroforestry, Value chains
- Genome-wide comparative diversity uncovers population structure, global distribution, and targets of selection in hexaploid oat. A worldwide survey reveals how oat diversity is structured, spread, and shaped by breeding, helping pinpoint untapped genetic resources for future improvement.
- Genomic diversity and the domestication history of cotton (Gossypium hirsutum). Its genome traces cotton’s journey from its wild origins in Mesoamerica while documenting the genetic narrowing that accompanied domestication.
- Genetic architecture of sugarcane traits in a polyploid genomics framework. New genomic tools finally begin to untangle the diversity of one of agriculture’s most genetically complex crops, exposing the basis of traits breeders have long selected largely in the dark.
- Projected warming will exceed the long-term thermal limits of rice cultivation. Rice has historically thrived within remarkably stable climatic boundaries. Those boundaries are now on course to be crossed across major growing regions, with profound implications for global food security. Diversity to the rescue?
- An inter-specific Amaranthus pangenome captures genetic variation potentially underlying key leafy vegetable traits in this underutilised crop. A rich reservoir of previously hidden diversity emerges from across multiple cultivated amaranths, offering breeders new options for improving a neglected but nutritious vegetable.
- Impact of gardening and nutrition support provided to women in refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Even in one of the world’s most challenging humanitarian settings, greater interspecific crop diversity translated into better diets, improved food security, and enhanced wellbeing.
- Designing perennial crop-based agroforestry systems: specificities, challenges, and opportunities. Diversification does not stop at the field edge: how perennial crops can be combined with trees to deliver productive, resilient, and biodiversity-friendly farming systems.
- Towards Nature Positive supply chains: From biodiversity commitments to organisational action. What would it take to move biodiversity from corporate promises to business practice? Maybe the above examples can help turn aspiration into measurable action.
Nibbles: Johnny Appleseed, ICRAF genebanks, China lychee genebank, Ethiopian Biodiversity Institute, Saudi tree genebanks, European genebank data, Pricing nature
- Johnny Appleseed basically set up fruit tree genebanks 200 years ago.
- Modern fruit tree genebanks could probably learn something from Mr Appleseed.
- Is there a Mr Lycheeseed, I wonder?
- There are probably some fruit tree collections at the Ethiopian Biodiversity Institute.
- Saudi Arabia is betting on tree genebanks. Maybe even fruit tree genebanks.
- All genebanks need to share their data, according to the guy in charge of helping European genebanks share their data.
- Can you put a value on genebanks? Should you?
Nibbles: Fit for Biodiversity, Food value chains, FAO, SeedTracker, Morocco genetic erosion, Pastoralists, Cannabis seedbanks
- A conference on biodiversity in agri-food systems. Including agrobiodiversity?
- A photo essay about food value chains in India. Including agrobiodiversity?
- A few examples of FAO’s work on how agriculture sustains biodiversity. Including agrobiodiversity.
- An app to track seeds. And therefore agrobiodiversity.
- A warning that 75% of the agrobiodiversity of Morocco’s wheat and barley has been lost in the past 50 years. Ah, so that 75% number is true of something after all. Maybe they could use SeedTracker.
- A reminder that pastoralists guard biodiversity. Including agrobiodiversity.
- A Genesys for weed. Well, I guess it’s agrobiodiversity.
Brainfood: Indigenous edition
- Rapid adaptive increase of amylase gene copy number in Indigenous Andeans. Indigenous Andean populations evolved exceptionally high copy numbers of the AMY1 salivary amylase gene, likely linked to long-term adaptation to starch-rich diets associated with potato domestication roughly 10,000 years ago.
- Horse genetics, archaeology, and the beginning of riding. Horse domestication was not a sudden genetic event beginning around 2200–2100 BCE, but a long and regionally varied process in which Indigenous Eurasian pastoralists progressively managed, rode, milked and selectively bred multiple horse lineages over many centuries, transforming mobility and social organization well before the rise of the dominant modern domestic horse lineage.
- Bridging biodiversity and food systems: A nationwide synthesis of non-conventional food plants (PANCs) in Brazil. Brazil’s non-conventional food plants (PANCs) and associated Indigenous and traditional knowledge could help build more diverse, climate-resilient and socially inclusive food systems while strengthening biodiversity conservation, rural livelihoods and public food programs.
- Indigenous Wisdom for a Changing World: Bridging Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Biodiversity Conservation. Sacred groves and other community-managed landscapes in central Ethiopia conserve high levels of biodiversity through Indigenous institutions, ritual practices and traditional ecological knowledge, suggesting that effective conservation depends on treating cultural stewardship systems as integral to ecological resilience rather than as secondary to scientific management.
- When Knowledge Isn’t Free: Legal and Ethical Imperatives of Protecting Indigenous Intellectual Property. There’s a persistent mismatch between Western intellectual-property regimes and Indigenous concepts of collective ownership, biocultural heritage and intergenerational custodianship of knowledge, and that’s unfair.
- Crediting and citing Indigenous Knowledges within research. Biodiversity conservation becomes more effective when Indigenous scientists and communities participate as equal partners rather than merely as local stakeholders or informants.