We have never had access to more kinds of food plants, yet the world’s diets and production systems have never been more alike. That is the paradox at the heart of Food plant diversity in a rapidly ch...

Twiga Foods demonstrated that venture capital subsidies can accelerate customer acquisition, but they cannot change unit economics.

Just a few companies, including Swiss ones, account for a disproportionate share of the market for agricultural inputs like seeds, machinery and chemicals.

There’s a paper out that's worth getting to grips with if you are interested in genebanks having an impact, even though it never actually mentions genebanks. David Pannell’s Reflections on Adoption of...

Cantabria is putting the Pasiega cow in the bank. Just in case. Spain’s “goat-cows” are fighting wildfires the old-fashioned way: by eating the fuel. I hope they're in the bank too. India has made a B...

There's a wave of groundwork being laid -- genomic, cultural, and geospatial -- for opportunity crops, but the governance, disease-pressure, market and environmental constraints that marginalized them...

Frafra potato is having a moment: an indigenous West African tuber, adored locally and mostly ignored by science, out looking for its big commercial break. Speaking of breakthroughs, this bus driver f...

There is nothing particularly new about the idea that the stuff genebanks conserve should be used. For decades, plant genetic resources specialists have pointed out that conserving crop diversity is o...

Two new studies of very different crops – banana and chrysanthemum, of all things – end up telling surprisingly similar, deliciously complicated stories. For these crops, domestication was not once an...

Blue mangoes. Kampot pepper. Antarctic flowering plant. Sapelo Island red pea. Navajo seed data.

New webinar series from the American Society of Plant Biologists will explore how underutilized (or is it opportunity) crops like amaranth can contribute to nutrition, food security and rural liveliho...

Grinding, fermenting, and detoxifying our way to bigger brains — an anthropologist makes the case that food processing, historically women's work, did as much for human evolution as the mammoth-speari...

I missed the “From Seeds to Success: Digital Tools for Planning and Managing Forest Restoration" webinar a few weeks ago, jointly organized by the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, the Mi...

Speaking of digital imagery and its uses in genebanks, get a load of the recently published catalogues of the Cuban sweet potato collection at the Research Institute of Tropical Roots and Tuber Crops ...

Festivals, rituals and seed-saving go hand in hand, as this photo essay on Koraput's Adivasis shows for World Indigenous Peoples Day. Speaking of unlikely alliances, Israeli and Palestinian researcher...

Hello It isn’t easy to get cool enough to sleep, which leads to a fair amount of time during which my thoughts spiral down. Sorry, not sorry, to share here....

Ethnobotanical and genetic assessments of Central American avocado landraces reveal novel sources of biodiversity and ancient migration patterns. DNA from landraces, and interviews with farmers, show ...

In the UK, Herefordshire's Museum of Cider is picking up national recognition for its genebank of heritage apple trees. The BBC's canonical autumnal apple story comes a little early this year. Speakin...

Yet more on agrobiodiversity marketing in Kenya. This time it's coffee. Spring Valley Coffee gives out nifty little cards on all its products, providing information on the varietal composition of diff...

Hello It remains too hot to think, and quite by coincidence, for sure, as far as food news goes, I have had very little to think about this past week....

Coming across this new (at least for me) frozen amaranth product in a Nairobi supermarket yesterday... ...reminded me that the Amaranth Institute Symposium 2026 is coming up soon. It really is amazing...

Consumers are feeling bad vibes about the state of food safety in the U.S., and moving away from fresh produce as Trump administration pushes ‘Eat real food’ message.

A North Macedonian professor's 15-year rescue mission for landraces and crops surviving only in remote villages. Why bother? Stay tuned... Ancient grapevines in Tigray represent a unique genetic linea...

What is a false positive?

Hello We had a brief respite from the heat last week, but things are ramping up again. Does that make me want to be back in the Middle Ages? Not really. And...

Info on gianduia (gianduja) chocolate and Nutella.

Hello This ought to be the silly season, when the stories are all man eats dogfood. This week’s haul tells a very different tale, of the power of big...

Dietary diversity, food security, and development projects in low- and middle-income contexts: Findings from 24 countries. Development projects are most effective at improving dietary diversity and fo...

Why the modern food system prizes uniformity even though resilience depends on diversity. Spoiler alert: follow the money. Historic crop varieties are finding renewed relevance as farmers contend with...

Genome-wide molecular diversity analyses identify wild Cicer as reservoirs of variations for chickpea improvement. Wild relatives of chickpea harbour a wealth of genetic variation that has yet to be e...

Hello Happy to share a small part of my own origin story today, besides a bit of wonky stuff and some explosive news. Help Save Wakelyns This one is...