Category: Vegetables

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Nibbles: Agricultural expansion maps, Brassica diversity, Not against the grain, South African seedbanks, Safer peanuts, Diné seedbank

  1. Agriculture is bad for natural ecosystems. But great for maps, you have to admit.
  2. Greens are good for you. And this is a great roundup of the latest scholarship on brassica evolution, domestication and diversity. You’ll find most of the paper quoted in past Brainfoods.
  3. Grains are great. Especially with greens.
  4. Thank goodness for household seed banking. Especially in conjunction with the formal kind.
  5. All so we can breed a better peanut. And cut down more natural ecosystem?
  6. No, there’s community genebanks for that too…
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Nibbles: Online seeds, Yam breeding, Rice genebanks, Indian commmunity seed banks, Sikkim banana, Cassava disease, ICARDA genebank, Tajikistan women

  1. The perils of dematerialization play out in India.
  2. Is YamHub dematerialization?
  3. Rice genebanks in Bangladesh and at IRRI are pretty solid.
  4. There’s a pretty solid platform for India’s community seed banks.
  5. I hope Nagaland’s wild bananas end up in genebanks.
  6. Cassava’s diversity is in multiple genebanks, and that’s a good thing, CBSD and all.
  7. ICARDA’s genebank back in the Syrian news, though in a good way for once.
  8. Tajikistan’s women farmers are bringing back crops with not a worry about dematerialization. Or genebanks, it seems.
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Nibbles: Restoration, Monitoring, CARDI, Margot Forde, Warwick, Slow Beans 2025, Lonicera

  1. Africa needs good forest seeds.
  2. And genetic monitoring of the resulting plantings, probably.
  3. The Caribbean also wants quality seed, and thinks a mobile seed bank is the way to get it.
  4. The only mobile things about New Zealand’s genebank are its collectors.
  5. A very mobile donation to the UK’s vegetable genebank.
  6. Nothing very mobile about Slow Beans 2025, but that’s the point.
  7. The long journey of honeysuckle.
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Nibbles: Ukraine duplication, Mexican native maize, Andean agriculture double, Campanian crops double, Pacific cryobank, Moringa promotion

  1. A little more safety for Ukraine’s seeds, thanks to a new genebank.
  2. A little more safety for Mexico’s native maize, thanks to Pres. Sheinbaum.
  3. A little more safety for Andean agriculture, thanks to Ecuadorian Indigenous women and Inside Mater in Peru.
  4. A little more safety for Ischia’s zampognaro bean and Amalfi’s lemons, thanks to local people (and GIAHS).
  5. A little more safety for Pacific crops, thanks to cryopreservation. Breadfruit next?
  6. A little more safety for moringa? At least in Africa with all its “opportunity crops”?