- With remarkable regularity, China announces some impressive genebank thing. Like a catalog for 105 tropical crop genebanks. But where is it?
- On the other hand, we probably don’t hear enough about African genebanks, so this piece is very welcome.
- Or about genebanks in Papua New Guinea, for that matter.
- Have we heard enough about “opportunity crops” yet? No, probably not.
- We will never stop hearing about the “bananocalypse,” I suspect.
- Or about the IRRI genebank from Mike Jackson. Not that I mind.
- The latest on the African Runner Peanut, about which we have blogged before. Several times. Not that I mind.
- I will never tire of hearing about genebanks getting loads of money.
- I will also never tire of hearing about win-win outcomes for biodiversity and food production.
- The Navajo know all about that. And the Wayuu people in Guajira, Colombia for that matter.
- We will soon all be tired of hearing about all the various COPs, but for now let’s see what the Dutch genebank and, let’s see who else we have, ok, sure, why not, ESG investors — what do they have to say?
Brainfood: EU landraces, EU GIs, Citizen fruit scientists, Nordic potatoes, Czech wheat, German wheat, Wild Brassica collecting, Chinese & European soybeans, Italian goats
- Landrace in situ (on-farm) conservation: European Union achievements. Lots of organizations and farmers are conserving landraces in Europe, in lots of ways, and pretty successfully, but the most sustainable way to do so would be to decrease barriers to their marketing, in particular in the context of organic agriculture.
- An assessment of the implementation of the EU policy for conservation varieties from 2009 to 2023 and its relationship to Geographical Indications. Few European GIs use conservation varieties (i.e. landraces), but this should, and probably will, change.
- New citizen science initiative enhances flowering onset predictions for fruit trees in Great Britain. Imagine doing this for European landraces.
- Genetic markers identify duplicates in Nordic potato collections. Ooops, some alleged landraces in European genebanks turn out to be old improved varieties.
- Curation of historical phenotypic wheat data from the Czech Genebank for research and breeding. You need data on all those landraces if people are going to use them. Citizen scientists might help, I guess.
- Trait-customized sampling of core collections from a winter wheat genebank collection supports association studies. But you need to use that data to create subsets first, and you can do that in lots of different ways, for different purposes: let the German genebank show you how.
- Collecting Mediterranean wild species of the Brassica oleracea group (Brassica sect. Brassica). Even in Europe some gap-filling collecting is still necessary.
- A comparison of Chinese wild and cultivar soybean with European soybean collections on genetic diversity by Genome-Wide Scan. Even breeders in the soybean center of diversity might find material from Europe’s genebanks useful.
- Can Sustainability and Biodiversity Conservation Save Native Goat Breeds? The Situation in Campania Region (Southern Italy) between History and Regional Policy Interventions. Conservation livestock breeds, anyone?
The outline of a deal for a better MLS?
Where are we with the whole enhancing the functioning of the Plant Treaty’s Multilateral System thing? I’m glad you asked. You’ll remember that…
[h]istorically, parties have been divided between creating a subscription-only system of payment upon registration, and maintaining a single-access option along the lines of the benefit-sharing payments under the current SMTA.
Well, at a meeting of the relevant committee last week in Rome there was a proposal from the co-chairs for a…
…single subscription mechanism with two alternative triggers for mandatory monetary benefit-sharing: an early payment upon registration or a deferred payment upon commercialization of a product incorporating material from the MLS.
Much remains to be done, but this is being seen as a bit of a “procedural breakthrough.” Fingers crossed.
Brainfood: Diverse ecologists, Wild vs cultivated, Ecosystem services, Indigenous people, Mixtures, On-farm trees, Monitoring protected areas, Social media & protected areas, Wild harvesting, Land sparing vs sharing, Agroecology & plant health, Wild vs cultivated
- On the importance of diversity in ecological research. Diversity of the research teams, that is. This should apply to everything that follows.
- Adapting wild biodiversity conservation approaches to conserve agrobiodiversity. The main gap seem to be in the area of “payment for system services.” Agrobiodiversity could learn from biodiversity there.
- The Role of Crop, Livestock, and Farmed Aquatic Intraspecific Diversity in Maintaining Ecosystem Services. And there’s a lot to pay for, apparently.
- No basis for claim that 80% of biodiversity is found in Indigenous territories. There are better numbers for the undoubted (but alas still unrewarded) importance of Indigenous people for biodiversity conservation.
- Plant diversity decreases greenhouse gas emissions by increasing soil and plant carbon storage in terrestrial ecosystems. Huge meta-analysis says plant mixtures are better than monocultures for C storage. Maybe someone should pay for that?
- Food-sourcing from on-farm trees mediates positive relationships between tree cover and dietary quality in Malawi. And some of those trees will be wild.
- Delivering Systematic and Repeatable Area-Based Conservation Assessments: From Global to Local Scales. Actually, the Digital Observatory for Protected Areas (DOPA) could also usefully be applied to agricultural biodiversity.
- Applying deep learning on social media to investigate cultural ecosystem services in protected areas worldwide. Well, of course, it was only a matter of time. And the above comment also applies.
- Does long-term harvesting impact genetic diversity and population genetic structure? A study of Indian gooseberry (Phyllanthus emblica) in the Central Western Ghats region in India. AI will only get you so far. But it would be interesting to see if AI could have predicted these results. More training dataset needed, I suspect.
- Agrobiodiversity conservation enables sustainable and equitable land sparing. Intensifying agriculture can be good for land sparing, but its sustainability depends on land sharing. Nice way to escape the dichotomy.
- Towards an agroecological approach to crop health: reducing pest incidence through synergies between plant diversity and soil microbial ecology. I guess this is an example of the above.
- Are agricultural commodity production systems at risk from local biodiversity loss? Have you not been listening?
Nibbles: Svalbard Global Seed Vault, CePaCT genebank, CIAT genebank, Australia rice genebank, Bangladesh genebank, Maize mutants garden, Inoculants genebank, Millets community seedbank, Payments for Agrobiodiversity Conservation Services, Triadic Comparison of Technology Options, Crop diversity, Intercropping, Agroforestry, Diet diversity, World economy, Sustainable food
- Never thought I’d see the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Psychology Today, yet here we are.
- The Pacific’s regional genebank is set for more work on lesser-known crops. Too bad most of them won’t be able to go to Svalbard.
- How to make a genebank beautiful as well as sustainable.
- Australia has a rice genebank. For some reason.
- Bangladesh gets a new genebank. Could have sworn it already had one.
- Mutants need a genebank too.
- And inoculants.
- Community-level genebanks have their place too. Though probably not for mutants.
- As long as the farmers get a benefit, of course.
- Tricot is a good way of evaluating all that stuff in genebanks.
- But you should also genotype it.
- Why bother with all this? Andreas Volz has a nice explanation.
- Genetic diversity is all very good, but don’t forget to intercrop.
- Which includes agroforestry.
- For a more varied diet.
- And a better world economy.
- And a more sustainable food system.