Brainfood: Commons edition

Brainfood: Domestication, Maize roots, Dental calculus, Psychedelic drugs, Green manures, Forage millet, VIR radish, Wild beans, Siberian dogs, Maize taxi, Dairying history

Smallholder access to seeds in Africa benchmarked

You’ll remember that the good people at Access to Seeds Index rate seed companies on how and to what extent they make their products available to smallholder farmer in developing countries. Today they launched the results for 32 companies working in Western and Central Africa. Here are the key findings (I’m quoting):

  • Seed companies are active in almost all index countries across Sub-Saharan Africa and South and South-east Asia.
  • Many companies are providing more diverse portfolios for vegetables and field crops but need to offer more pulses to help tackle malnutrition.
  • Leading seed companies are offering extension services in more countries.
  • Companies are still only concentrating their investments in infrastructure in a few countries.

But you want to know who did well in the rankings, right? Ok, here’s the Top 3.

Well done, Bayer, East-West and Novalliance.

Brainfood: Mapping double, Niche modelling, CGIAR impacts, Pathogen genebank, Data stewardship, Breeding tradeoffs, Organic vs conventional, Agronomic trials, Teff evaluation, Eggplant genetic resources, Quinoa phenotyping

Nibbles: Genebanks in Brazil, Tunisia, Ghana, Ethiopia, Goan rice, Wheat adoption, Peruvian hot peppers & cacao, Amazonian fruits and nuts, Dates, Great Hedge of India, Conservation genetics presentation

  1. Safety duplicating a chickpea collection.
  2. Tunisia’s genebank in the news.
  3. Ghana’s genebank trying to save taro.
  4. Using a genebank to improve Elephant grass.
  5. On-farm conservation of rice in Goa.
  6. Molecular tools show that a couple of varieties account for about half the wheat acreage in Bangladesh and Nepal. Hope all the landraces are in genebanks, and safety duplicated.
  7. Celebrating Peruvian pepper diversity.
  8. Peru’s cacao diversity doesn’t need help, apparently.
  9. However, the Amazon’s wild-extracted fruits (including cacao and a wild relative) could be in trouble. Hope they’re in genebanks, just in case.
  10. How the date came to the US. Including its genebanks.
  11. India had a precursor of the Green Wall of Africa but nobody remembers it. Glad it wasn’t used as a genebank of sorts.
  12. Conservation genetics (i.e., most of the above) explained in 48 slides.