Brainfood: Community seedbanks, Habitat conservation, Maize breeding, NWFP, Neolithic dairy, Straw, Double burden, Species protection, Salty rice, Barley landraces, Scicomm

Plant, People, Planet, Data

We are creating a special collection of Plants, People, Planet to provide a space for this range of opinions as well as examples and background information on these complex and challenging topics.

Oh yeah, and what might those be, Colin? Nothing less than access to digital information on crop diversity. That usually means genotypic information, but not only. You’ll remember that issue was very much front and centre at the most recent meeting of the Governing Body of the Plant Treaty a few months back, in another life. Got a case study, or indeed a solution? You can submit them here.

Genebanks in the time of COVID-19

From the desk of Landscape News comes a series of live interviews with experts examining the linkages between COVID-19 and climate change. On 13 May, Tony Simons, director general of World Agroforestry (ICRAF), will speak with Charlotte Lusty, head of programs and genebank platform coordinator at Crop Trust; Lava Kumar, virologist and head of germplasm health at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA); and Vania Azevedo, genebank head at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) about the relationship between COVID-19, genebanks and the conservation of seeds.

Register here.

Our climate envelope takes a licking

The headlines for coverage of the paper “Future of the human climate niche” will no doubt be about the fact that over the coming 50 years, absent migration or mitigation, 1 to 3 billion people look like they’ll end up living outside the climatic conditions our species has gotten used to over the past 6000 years. But I can’t help thinking about something else. What are those bits of the human climate envelope where there is currently so little agriculture and livestock? I’ve drawn little white ovals around them in this figure from the paper.