- EcoregionsTreeFinder—A Global Dataset Documenting the Abundance of Observations of > 45,000 Tree Species in 828 Terrestrial Ecoregions. The right native tree for your ecoregion of choice. Which, given lots of the stuff below, is good to know. Oh, and BTW, there’s also the Agroforestry Species Switchboard.
- Modelling the distribution of plant-associated microbes with species distribution models. Would be cool to mash up with the above one day.
- The promise of digital herbarium specimens in large-scale phenology research. Something else you can use herbarium specimens for, if you’re careful.
- A global indicator of species recovery. The Green Status Index of Species Recovery, no less. Herbaria surely involved again.
- Valorization of feral pigs in the tropics, from the genetic characterization to the re- domestication. Wish there was a Green Status Index of Breed Recovery.
- Global staple food trade exacerbates biodiversity loss: a network perspective. Soybeans are messing with the Green Status Index of Species Recovery of lots of species, I suspect.
- Prospects for cereal self-sufficiency in sub-Saharan Africa. Prospects for self-sufficiency are not bad, but will require yield increases if the Green Status Index of Species Recovery is not going to take a hit.
- Protecting crops with plant diversity: Agroecological promises, socioeconomic lock-in, and political levers. Agroforestry and diverse landscapes are best for pest control, but cultivar mixtures are worth a try too. Wonder what they will do for cereal self-sufficiency in Africa. I lot, I bet, if given a chance.
- The dynamics of crop diversity and seed use in the context of recurrent climate shocks and poverty: Seasonal panel data evidence from rural Uganda. Farmers use crop diversity to cope with climate change, and wealthy farmers do it better. Pest control too, maybe?
- Understanding Farmer Preferences to Guide Crop Improvement: The Case of Grasspea in Ethiopia. Breeders should provide jam today and jam tomorrow.
- Crop diversity trends captured by Indigenous and local knowledge: introduction to the symposium. Indigenous and local knowledge can help you keep track of all of the above.
Noah? No way!
In the latest GROW webinar, Prof. Stef de Haan, of the International Potato Centre and more recently Wageningen University and Research, explains how genebanks alone won’t preserve crop diversity adequately unless linked with farmer custodians, local seed systems, and policy spaces. Sounds like he also falls squarely in the middle in the old Erna vs Otto bunfight.
To save you googling, the Rikuy Agrobio website he mentions, with the community-level tools for monitoring crop diversity, is here. And you can explore potato diversity in on-farm hotspots on wikiPapa here. Both only in Spanish so far, but well worth looking into. Fascinating stuff, and obviously valuable, but I do wonder how to scale up this sort of thing to all crops, everywhere.
Nibbles: Indian vault, Sundarban rice, Community seed banks, Fiji cassava, Georgia documentary, Kenya seed network, Nigeria mobilizes, Coffee prizes, Slow Food guardians, Peasant seed sovereignty, World Economic Forum seed pean, Seed sector shindig, Genesys acceleration
- Times of India says “India needs a new doomsday seed vault.” Why not just use the one already there in Svalbard?
- Meanwhile, women in the Sundarban are doing it for themselves.
- Maybe it’s community doomsday seed vaults that India needs?
- Fiji’s cassava is facing a doomsday of its own.
- Georgia — the country — is working on a documentary on crop diversity which will no doubt include their seed deposit in Svalbard.
- Kenya has a pretty good community genebanks video of its own.
- Nigeria is all over crop diversity. Not just once, but twice.
- Coffee prices going up? Can you imagine what will happen if we don’t conserve enough of its diversity?
- Want more examples of the coolness of crop diversity and its guardians? Slow Food has your back.
- La Via Campesina needs to encouragement either, where “peasant seeds” and their guardians are concerned.
- Even the World Economic Forum wants in on the act.
- And yet the seed sector seems…reluctant?
- Good job Genesys is getting faster, eh?
Brainfood: Complementarity, Temporality, Communality, Fonio trifecta, Atriplex domestication, Egyptian clover in India, Genebank information systems
- A significantly enhanced role for plant genetic resource centres in linking in situ and ex situ conservation to aid user germplasm access. On-farm conservation must result in use of the conserved diversity, and genebanks can help with that. Just another way of saying the two approaches are complementary?
- Looking back to look ahead: the temporal dimension of conservation seed bank collections. Those genebanks may need to do repeated sampling of the same population though.
- Landrace diversity and heritage of the indigenous millet crop fonio (Digitaria exilis): Socio-cultural and climatic drivers of change in the Fouta Djallon region of Guinea. Repeated sampling would defintely have helped.
- Community seedbanks in Europe: their role between ex situ and on-farm conservation. Repeated sampling is kind of what community seedbanks do, no?
- Impacts of climate change on fonio millet: seed germination and suitability modelling of an important indigenous West African crop. Community seedbanks may not be enough though.
- Phylogenetics, evolution and biogeography of four Digitaria food crop lineages across West Africa, India, and Europe. Maybe the wild relatives will help.
- Black Ash – a Forgotten Domestication Trait in Garden Orach (Atriplex hortensis L.). It’s amazing what people domesticated plants for in the past. And might in the future.
- Quality seed production scenario of Egyptian clover (Trifolium alexandrinum) in India: A 24-year retrospective analysis. But in the end, you have to get high quality certified seeds out, and that’s not always easy.
- The potential of seedbank digital information in plant conservation. Will definitely need a pretty good documentation system to keep all the above straight.
Nibbles: Agrobiodiversity, HealthyDiets4Africa, Warwick genebank, NPGS trifecta, Florida potatoes, On farm, Guatemalan community seed banks, Welsh black oats, WorldVeg genebank, Turkish olive genebank, Citrus genebank, Orchard of Flavours, Piper diversity, Ancient Egyptian food, Chocolate & world history, Ancient DNA & breeding
- What has agrobiodiversity ever done for us? Kent Nnadozie of the Plant Treaty lays it out.
- Michael Frei of the HealthyDiets4Africa project doesn’t need it laid out.
- Neither do the people who awarded a prize to Charlotte Allender of the UK Vegetable Genebank.
- What has the US National Plant Germplasm System ever done for anyone? The Guardian, the NY Times and NPR News lay it out. I guess someone in D.C. needs it laid out, but will it make any difference?
- Everyone: Potatoes in Florida! Breeders: No problem. NPGS: You called?
- Here’s The Guardian again, but this time thinking it is making the case for not putting seeds in the fridge, whereas in fact it’s making the case for the complementarity of ex situ and on-farm conservation.
- Speaking of on-farm conservation, here’s a couple of pieces on community seed banks in Guatemala.
- Speaking of on-farm conservation, here’s the heart-warming story of Welsh organic farmer Gerald Miles.
- Meanwhile, the World Vegetable Centre opens a new genebank.
- And Türkiye hosts an international, no less, olive genebank.
- And genebanks can be so beautiful, like works of art. Former Tate Modern director Vicente Todolí lays out his citrus samples. I wonder what he could do with olives.
- Botanic gardens are beautiful and often act a little bit like crop genebanks. Here’s an example from Portugal I stumbled onto recently, I forget how.
- You know what I’d like to see? An international pepper genebank, that’s what. No, not the kind that might be in those Guatemalan community seedbanks or the WorldVeg genebank. This sort of pepper. Piper pepper.
- I bet the ancient Egyptians had pepper. Egyptian archaeologist Mennat-Allah El Dorry lays out what else they had.
- Maybe you could lay out world history using pepper. You can definitely do so using cacao and chocolate.
- No, not using ancient DNA, but actually…