- 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: Nourishing investments, Genebank RoI, Seed science double, Ecuador genebank, Ethiopian genebank, MSSRF genebank, CG genebanks, Botanic gardens, SwissAid saves seeds, Brazil conservation, Indian diner, Kenyan food, Saladino on citrus, Lost apple, Seed Savers, Hybrids, Germplasm crime
- All of IFAD’s 5 investments that will help nourish the world involve crop diversity. Well I never.
- And yet we still have to have articles on communicating the importance of genebanks.
- Cosmos tries to do it by pointing to the science.
- Smithsonian Magazine tries to do it by saying it’s tricky.
- Genebanks try to do it by having nice new websites and talking to the media. Some of the biggest media.
- CGIAR tries to do it by calling them an Accelerator.
- IIED tries to do it by saying even botanic gardens can help farmers.
- SwissAid thinks “[n]ational and international gene banks should give farmers’ organizations low-threshold access to their collections.” No argument there.
- Maybe we should have songs about genebanks, like the Maxakali have about the Atlantic Forest.
- Or we could just talk about food, food, glorious food.
- Could also just fall back on the good old canonical lost-heirloom-apple-found story.
- Or the canonical medical case for “ancient grains” story.
- Though even there the heirlooms vs hybrids debate will rage I suppose…
- But, whatever we do, let’s not take it to extremes, shall we?
Coffee with everything
It might be because we happen to be doing something on the coffee diversity conservation strategy at work, but I have been noticing a lot of joe-related material online lately. There’s the bit on Sprudge (apparently, “the world’s most popular coffee publication”) about how coffee diversity needs a Svalbard. Seconded. And, from the same source, also comes a spotlight on Madagascar’s amazing coffee diversity.
Moving to West Africa’s diversity, there’s a Financial Times piece on Coffea stenophylla. And something that seems to be only on LinkedIn (for now) from Dr Steffen Schwarz of Coffee Consulate about how microbe diversity can do wonders with the flavour profile and caffeine content of C. liberica.
Finally, an official submission has gone in for Yemeni coffee to be included in UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage List. I wonder if all this bodes well for our thing.
Brainfood: CC & crop diversity, Dietary Species Richness, CC & banana, European genebank representativeness, Effective Population Size, VarScout, Borlotti bean diversity, Oaxacan? Green Dent, Sorghum mucilage, Gut bacterial diversity
- Climate change threatens crop diversity at low latitudes. At low latitudes maybe about a third of the production of 30 major crops shifts outside their climatic niche under 2-3°C global warming, and potential food crop diversity declines on half of global cropland, but potential diversity increases elsewhere. So that’s all good then?
- Dietary species richness provides a comparable marker for better nutrition and health across contexts. Dietary species richness (DSR) can be used as a marker for the nutrition and health. If DSR is related to production diversity, I guess that could mean trouble at lower latitudes?
- Socio-economic factors constrain climate change adaptation in a tropical export crop. Actually the reduction in suitable area is 60% for banana. And there’s a decline in yield too. Unclear what that will do to DSR.
- Plant evolutionary history is largely underrepresented in European seed banks. Would be interesting to apply this specifically to crops. Or even just crop wild relatives.
- The Idiot’s Guide to Effective Population Size. Can this be usefully applied to crops? I’d like to see how banana comes out.
- Digital Revolution in Farmer Fields: VarScout Unveils Kenya’s Varietal Landscape – The Case of Potato. I’d like to see how banana comes out.
- Genetic Diversity and Distinctiveness of Common Beans (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) Between Landraces and Formal Cultivars Supporting Ex Situ Conservation Policy: The Borlotti Case Study in Northern Italy. It’s difficult, but not impossible, to distinguish — and maintain — landraces of Borlotti beans apart from obsolete and modern cultivars. I wonder if VarScout would help.
- Oaxacan Green Dent maize is not from Oaxaca. Watch out for landrace names.
- Mucilage produced by aerial roots hosts diazotrophs that provide nitrogen in Sorghum bicolor. Not just maize. And another aspect of diversity to have to worry about.
- Cryptic diversity of cellulose-degrading gut bacteria in industrialized humans. And another… What’s the interaction with DSR though?
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…