Category: Seed systems

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Nibbles: Food tree, Wild chocolate, Cacao, Cassava in Africa, Indigenous ABS, Abbasid food, Valuing trees

  1. Gastropod episode on The Fruit that Could Save the World. Any guesses what that might be?
  2. Atlas Obscura podcast on an apparently now famous wild-harvested chocolate from Bolivia. But how wild is it really?
  3. BBC podcast on cacao for balance.
  4. Forbes touts an African cassava revolution. What, no podcast?
  5. Very interesting piece from the ever reliable Modern Farmer on how a small seed company called Fedco Seeds designated a bunch of maize landraces as “indigenously stewarded,” and are paying 10% of what they make from the sale of their seeds to a pooled Indigenous fund which goes to support a local, multi-tribal project called Nibezun. A sort of mini-MLS? Definitely worth a podcast. Any takers?
  6. A long but rewarding article in New Lines Magazine describes medieval cookbooks from the Abbasid caliphate. The recipes make up for the somewhat stilted podcast.
  7. BGCI publication on how the Morton Arboretum works out whether it should be growing a particular population or species of tree. The trick is to quantify 5 types of “value”: environmental, evolutionary, genetic diversity, horticultural, conservation. Though one could also consider hostorical/cultural, educational and economic value as well. I suspect in the end it comes down to whether it looks nice in an available gap. If I were to do a podcast on this, I’d test it out with the tree in the first of these Nibbles.
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Nibbles: ICRISAT breeding, India climate change, Seed catalogues, Karabakh horse

  1. New ICRISAT varieties of sorghum, pearl millet and pigeonpea are doing well in drought-hit Kenya. For now, at least: something to keep an eye on. Genebanks and breeding to the rescue?
  2. It’s behind a Times of India paywall, alas, but this seems to be an article about the effects of a very warm February on wheat, vegetables and grapes in that country.
  3. Spring is coming to the northern hemisphere, so of course The New Yorker has a piece on the allure of seed catalogues. I hope there are drought-tolerant and heat-resistant varieties in there. And that they’re clearly labelled as such.
  4. Meanwhile, oblivious of it all, AramcoWorld has an elegiac piece on the revival of the Karabakh horse in Azerbaijan. Beautiful plumage.
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Nibbles: Vavilov, Argentine genebank, Millennium Seed Bank, Indian millets, Community seedbank, Creative finance, Healthy diets, African agriculture

  1. The Living Library of Resilience is a great name for what Nikolai Vavilov put together, and this longish piece from Maria Popova at The Marginalian is a great tribute to a great man.
  2. Vavilov’s example is being followed in Argentina, it seems, with the establishment of another genebank, in Corrientes.
  3. The Millennium Seed Bank reaches an important milestone. Vavilov would be proud.
  4. Can’t help thinking Vavilov would also wholeheartedly approve of grassroots Indian efforts to bring back millets, as usefully summarized The Locavore. Could have said a bit more about genebanks, though.
  5. Even genebanks like that of farmers such as Manas Ranjan Sahu. You don’t have to run an institute like Vavilov to build a genebank.
  6. The Global Alliance for the Future of Food and Transformational Investing in Food Systems Initiative (TIFS) have a report out on Mobilizing Money and Movements: Creative Finance for Food Systems Transformation. No genebanks in there either, alas, but there could so easily have been.
  7. FAO says billions of people in the world cannot afford a healthy diet, and it has the data to prove it. Does that mean genebanks are not doing their job (eg on nutrient dense orphan crops)? Or doing it too well (eg on the major calorie-rich staples)?
  8. African worthies say that we need to ramp up investment in the adaptation of agriculture on the continent to climate change. I hope that will include investment in Living Libraries of Resilience that conserve all manner of interesting local crops and varieties. And creative finance for them of course.
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Nibbles: Spanish wine, Wild bananas, African tree seeds, Ancient Foodways, Coffee genotyping, Barbados genebank, Modern plant breeding myths, Yam seeds, Climate funding for food systems

  1. There’s a piece in The Guardian on how Spanish wine makers are fighting climate change by going back to old grape varieties like estaladiña.
  2. Maybe the same will happen with bananas, and its wild relatives could help? If so, it’s good we have this nifty catalogue.
  3. A pan-African tree seed platform is in the making, thanks to CIFOR-ICRAF and IKI funding. Where’s the catalogue?
  4. Here’s a video from the University of Wisconsin-Madison on A New Way of Teaching Ancient Foodways.
  5. And a video from USDA on their work on genotyping coffee collections.
  6. Meanwhile, Barbados is still thinking about building a genebank.
  7. The Genetic Literacy Project does some myth-busting (or tries to): have modern varieties decreased the diversity within crops, are contemporary plant varieties really not suitable for low-input farming, and is improving agricultural practices enough without plant breeding? Take a wild guess.
  8. Yam researchers in Benin have their own take on improving agricultural practices.
  9. More climate funding should go to food system transformation, says the Global Alliance for the Future of Food in a report. Those Spanish winemakers — and everyone else above — would probably agree.
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Nibbles: Green seeds, Yam bean, Aussie wild tomato, Einkorn trial, US sorghum, Ethiopian forages tricot, Cuisine diversity, Apple catalogue, Hittite crash, Black Death

  1. Let’s say we wanted to transition to a more local and low-input production system in Europe. What seeds would we need and where would we get them from? The Greens/EFA in the European Parliament have some ideas.
  2. IITA is pushing the yam bean in Nigeria. Europe next?
  3. More on that new Australian wild tomato from a couple of years back. With audio goodness.
  4. The largest ever einkorn variety comparison trial makes the German news. Well, makes a press release anyway. Yam bean next?
  5. Another continent, another ancient grain: sorghum in the US. Yam bean next?
  6. The Ethiopia Grass project aims to improve livestock production, food crop yields AND soil quality. The trifecta!
  7. Nice infographics displaying dodgy data on the most common ingredients in different cuisines. Yam bean and einkorn nowhere to be seen.
  8. Cool community-created online catalogue of British apples. Looking forward to the yam bean one.
  9. It was drought that did for the Hittites, not lack of yam beans. Sea Peoples unavailable for comment.
  10. It was Yersinia pestis from Issyk-Kul that nearly did for Europe in the Middle Ages. Yes, you can study the genetic diversity of ancient deadly bugs and well as that of crops like yam bean and einkorn.