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

Arboreta have a community. And a newsletter. IPES-Food has a new website. The Dutch genebank describes its users. China has a back-up genebank. Dan Saladino has a new article out, and it’s bananas. The Brits freak out about their beer. As usual. And with limited justification. The EU gets tough on coffee ..read more

Did you have to develop new methods to clean the seed? Is it one of the longest cleaning or dormancy breaking processes? Was it the first time your species was germinated in a collection and unique germination methods had to be found? The catch is that the “you” has to be a botanic garden, but I do like the idea of the Global Seed Conservation Challenge Awards. The above is just one of six different categories. A few more days only for nominations, so get cracking ..read more

More on the US push for opportunity crops. Oh look there’s a whole compendium on African opportunity crops from FAO. Many of them are roots and tubers. For the Hopi, maize is an opportunity crop. For the Adivasis, it’s rice. And more along the same lines from Odisha. Llamas were an opportunity for lots of people down the ages. …and still are, for some. Portugal eschews llamas for an ancient cattle breed. I bet Mexico’s genebank offers some amazing opportunities. And New Zealand’s too. Let’s not forget bats. Yes, bats. Jeremy’s latest newsletter tackles turmeric, pepper and sweet potatoes, amo ..read more

Well, it all started with a paper with more or less that title from Maarten van Ginkel & Jeremy Cherfas last year. Their answer was that biofortification doesn’t work, costs yield and risks genetic uniformity. Ouch. So what to do? Diversify diets, of course. That was followed by a rebuttal from Prasanna Boddupalli, Jill Cairns and Natalia Palacios-Rojas of CIMMYT. Unfortunately, their letter is not open access, but if you want to know what van Ginkel and Cherfas think of their arguments, they’ve just published a counter: In conclusion, the charges raised by Boddupalli et al. are exactly t ..read more

Frugivory by carnivores: Black-backed jackals are key dispersers of seeds of the scented !nara melon in the Namib Desert. Jackals pee on wild melon relatives and disperse their seeds, not necessarily in that order. Out of the Shadows: Reestablishing the Eastern Fertile Crescent as a Center of Agricultural Origins: Part 1. Go East, young archaeobotanists! Extinction risk predictions for the world’s flowering plants to support their conservation. Fancy maths says 45% of angiosperms are potentially threatened. Same for crop wild relatives in the Eastern Fertile Crescent? Black-backed jackals una ..read more

A Facebook post from the Canada Agriculture and Food Museum on Faith Fyles, botanist and botanical artist, and the first woman assistant botanist in the federal Department of Agriculture (1911), leads to a treasure trove of interesting stuff ..read more

Vulnerability of U.S. new and industrial crop genetic resources. More germplasm (especially wild relatives) and breeders are needed in the US of castor bean, gumweed, guar, guayule, kenaf, roselle, safflower, sesame, sunn hemp, rubber dandelion and Vernonia. Safeguarding Plant Genetic Resources in the U.S. But the conservation system itself has its challenges, due to climate change. Operationalizing cultural adaptation to climate change: contemporary examples from United States agriculture. But climate change is not the only thing that agriculture (and possibly the conservation system too) ne ..read more

The global movement that is the Vision for Adapted Crops and Soils (VACS) has two new reports out and a nifty interactive website. Investing in underutilized indigenous and traditional corps can strengthen climate resilience and nutrition across the African continent. A portfolio of these crops is essential for regional food security and can improve local resilience in the face of changing weather patterns. Which we’ve been saying for years here, of course ..read more

Every once in a while I get the urge to remind everyone where they can get information on training courses in crop diversity conservation, and indeed training materials. So, anyway, of course there’s the Plant Treaty. A couple of online courses are available, on the Treaty itself and on Farmers’ Rights. Then there’s USDA’s GRIN-U. Great range of topics, materials and formats. The Millennium Seed Bank Partnership at Kew Gardens also has a bunch of training opportunities. And finally there’s BGCI’s Online Training Platform. You need to register for the online courses but it’s worth it. It’s kind ..read more