Vegetables – Page 46 – Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

May 29, 2020June 8, 2020

Nibbles: Lettuce breeding, SPC genebank, European genebanks, Messaging, New sorghum, Ancient DNA, Pastoralism review

A million bucks to save lettuce.
Genebank provides seeds shock.
The genebank of the future will provide data.
How to talk about genebanks (among other things).
A sorghum variety to keep an eye on.
The past, present and future of Cinchona.
Ancient genomics of people and dogs: compare and contrast.
Looking (up) to pastoralists for answers.

Nibbles: Fusarium, Lactobacillus, Lycopersicon, Digitaria, Morus

The latest on TR4 resistant banana varieties in Australia.
Lactobacillus is in fact 25 genera.
Greenhouse tomatoes pretty diverse after all?
Digitaria: from weed to forage.
London’s mulberries.

Nibbles: Alert edition

Book alert: Biodiversity, Food and Nutrition — A New Agenda for Sustainable Food Systems.
Thread alert: Monumental analysis of crop yield trends in the USA.
Woke alert: WorldVeg ticks a lot of boxes with its work on a peppers core collection.
Policy alert: Why haven’t farmers’ varieties found a place in national and global seed markets?

April 29, 2020April 29, 2020

Nibbles: Online courses, Colombian seeds, California grapes, Living lockdown

Online courses on plant-related stuff.
Beautiful catalog of Colombian heritage seeds.
California mission grapes came from Peru, not Mexico.
Taking care of living collections under coronavirus lockdown.

April 28, 2020April 28, 2020

Nibbles: Olives, Figs, Columbian Exchange, Flour, landraces Newsletter, DOIs

Is there any doubt that olives are important?
Or figs, for that matter.
Spanish botanical garden exhibit on Latin American plants that changed the European diet. Stunning.
Old mills making a comeback.
Latest issue of the Landraces newsletter from Farmer’s Pride. See also here for previous issues.
Huge PDF on DOIs in genebanks.

1. Ancient farmers didn’t have to wait for the genetic diversity that made domestication possible. They selected from variation already present in wild plants, including the ancestors of rice and maize. Domestication was as much about spotting (or happening upon) useful differences as creating new ones.
2. English colonists in America called Indigenous dogs “wolves,” revealing as much about colonial perceptions as about the animals themselves. This history of Indigenous dogs shows how unfamiliar animals were classified through peculiarly European ideas about wildness.
3. Austria is bringing forgotten apple varieties back to life. Saving old varieties in genebanks is one thing: getting people to grow, sell and eat them is another, but it can be done. Or at least tried.
4. Jordan’s olive-oil heritage centres on traditional varieties such as Nabali and ancient Rumi trees, but most production is consumed locally, leaving exports limited and making provenance, cultivar and harvest date important indicators for buyers. Compare and contrast with Austrian apples.
5. Small island developing states have distinctive food cultures and ingredients, but face particular challenges in building sustainable and resilient food systems. FAO’s A Taste of SIDS explores the connections between island food, biodiversity and culinary heritage. Nice to see diversity within crops considered, though a few local variety names would have been nice.
Published on October 21, 2026