There’s a new international treaty on the block. World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) members have just approved the Treaty on Intellectual Property, Genetic Resources and Associated Traditional Knowledge. What does it do? It’s basically about disclosing where genetic resources came from when claiming a patent. Broadly, where a claimed invention in a patent application is based on genetic resources, each contracting party shall require applicants to disclose the country of origin or source of the genetic resources. Where the claimed invention in a patent application is based on tra ..read more

Is your seed library on here? If not, you can add it ..read more

The genebank of the International Livestock Research Institute in Addis Ababa is 40 years old. There’s an online celebration tomorrow. See you there. Photo credit: Shawn Landersz, Consultant at The Global Crop Diversity Trust Oh, and probably coincidentally, you can read about ILRI’s forage work in Somalia in the latest newsletter from the Seed Systems Group ..read more

Global spatially explicit yield gap time trends reveal regions at risk of future crop yield stagnation. For 8 of 10 major crops, yield gaps have widened steadily from 1975 to 2010 over most areas, and remained static for sugar cane and oil palm. Time to turbo-charge the breeding? Domestication and the evolution of crops: variable syndromes, complex genetic architectures, and ecological entanglements. If you want to turbo-charge breeding, you need to understand (among other things) the ecological context of domestication. Including Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) in Agricultural Researc ..read more

Great to see a couple of my former bosses recognized for their exceptional contributions to the conservation on crop diversity. I like this quote from Geoff: This is really a chance to get that message out and say, look, this relatively small amount of money is our insurance policy, our insurance policy that we’re going to be able to feed the world in 50 years ..read more

The paper “Forgotten food crops in sub-Saharan Africa for healthy diets in a changing climate” by Maarten van Zonneveld, Roeland Kindt, Stepha McMullin, Enoch G. Achigan-Dako, Sognigbé N’Danikou, Wei-hsun Hsieh, Yann-rong Lin, and Ian K. Dawson has won the PNAS 2023 Cozzarelli Prize for the best paper of the year in Applied Biological, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences. Here’s the abstract: As the climate changes, major staple crop production in sub-Saharan Africa becomes increasingly vulnerable. Underutilized traditional food plants offer opportunities for diversifying cropping system ..read more

Benjamin Nowak, a “French lecturer in agronomy with teaching and research activities focused on soil sciences and remote sensing for crop monitoring” has a nice infographic showing “what a large farm would look like, growing all the world’s crops.” Pretty cool. But where’s all the ganja? A high-resolution version is available ..read more

From Dr Pat Byrne, Professor Emeritus of Plant Breeding and Genetics at Colorado State University. Colorado State University Online will offer 3 one-credit courses in Fall 2024 on Plant Genetic Resources Conservation and Use. Courses are targeted to the upper undergraduate/graduate student level and can be taken sequentially or independently. Course instructors are Dr Geoff Morris (CSU), Dr Davina Rhodes (CSU), and Dr Gayle Volk (USDA-ARS). The courses are as follows: SOCR 501 – Plant Genetic Resources: Origins, Aug. 19 – Sep. 22. Discover the origins of plant genetic resources, their domesti ..read more

Nice video celebrating seeds. Nice old video about Kew Gardens. Tracing the origins of Indonesian cassava. No, it wasn’t introduced by Kew, but yes, colonialism was involved. Latest data on where crops are grown. Including cassava. Self Help Africa director turns on to neglected crops. Including cassava. New lab in Kenya for spreading clean crops around. Including cassava? Türkiye’s genebank in the news. No cassava. Nepalese rice gets a Welsh upgrade. Collecting sugarcane in French Polynesia to (eventually) support local booze industry. Long live the ancient booze bandwagon. Garlic 101 ..read more

A couple of quick announcements today that I don’t want to get lost in Nibbles. First, there’s an International Conference on Agrobiodiversity going on in Nepal. I just found out about it, but it’s hybrid, so you can still join. Second, if you’re an expert on potatoes or sweet potatoes, consider taking this survey from CIP ..read more