Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

May 8, 2026May 8, 2026

Gaps galore in collards collections

Quick follow-up to my post a few days ago on the recent study of the origin of the collard greens grown in the Moroccan oases of the Draa and Ziz valleys.

Ethnobotanists Bronwen Powell and Abderrahim Ouarghidi used historical texts, linguistics, and Indigenous knowledge in their investigation, but of course it’s also possible to use genetics to figure out where the plants may have came from. Especially as there are plenty of accessions labelled Brassica oleracea var. acephala in the genebanks that share their data on Genesys — just over 1500 in fact.

Alas, that might in practice turn out to be tricky, though, due to the somewhat — ahem — skewed geographic distribution of the accessions in question. The yellow circles in the map below show the approximate locations of those oases on the edge of the Sahara.

Still worth trying, in my view, but really more than anything this should be an encouragement to do some more collecting. Or get more genebanks on Genesys. Or identify more B. oleracea accessions to variety level. Or…

What else has been collected in the Draa and Ziz valleys or thereabouts? Surprisingly little, mainly wheat, barley, chickpea, faba bean and alfalfa. The general location of the valleys is now shown by white squares.

May 7, 2026

MLS spoiler alert

Remember that “A comprehensive analysis of the operations of the Multilateral System – Insights and key figures 2025” that we trailed a few months back? The official launch is on 22 May and you can follow along virtually.

May 6, 2026May 7, 2026

Brassica on the brink

How did collards get to remote oases on the edge of the Sahara? That’s what ethnobotanists Bronwen Powell and Abderrahim Ouarghidi have been looking into for like 20 years now, and it’s a fascinating story. Which you can read about in detail in their paper in Economic Botany. They also present an abbreviated form of the argument in The Conversation. Which got Nibbled some months back, though without giving anything away. But actually what I recommend you do is listen to Jeremy interview the intrepid duo in the latest episode of Eat This Podcast.

May 4, 2026May 7, 2026

Brainfood: Silk Road, Wheat domestication, Peanut domestication, Olive wild relatives, Pearl millet movement, Maori horticulture, Wild meat, Fermentation

Domesticated: How Cultivated Species Altered Ancient Silk Road Societies. Different stages of adopting and intensifying the use of domesticates (livestock, horses, and later crops) reshaped economies, mobility, and social organization in north-central Asia, ultimately enabling the emergence of the Silk Road. So domesticated species were as active drivers of Eurasian historical development as of prehistory.
Ancient grains illuminate the mosaic origin of domesticated wheat. Domesticated wheat arose through repeated hybridizations between distinct wild populations carrying complementary non-shattering spike mutations, followed by ongoing gene flow and regional adaptation, making domestication a prolonged and interconnected process. Long before the result got to the Silk Road.
A single hybrid origin of cultivated peanut. Domestication of the peanut seems to have been easier than that of wheat.
A synthetic eco-evolutionary proposal for the conservation of wild relatives of the olive tree. If we ever have to re-domesticate the olive, we should make sure these 53 wild populations are conserved.
Westward expansion of pearl millet agriculture into the Lac de Guiers basin, Senegal, by c. AD 200. I wonder what the Sahelian equivalent of the Silk Road was.
Horticultural intensification and plant-based diets of 18th century CE Waikato Māori in Aotearoa New Zealand. At least some Maori ate predominantly sweet potato and taro during the Traditional Period. Which of course were brought to Aotearoa via the ara moana, which, stretching a point, is the South Pacific equivalent of the Silk Road.
Increase in wild animal consumption across Central Africa. Yeah, but who needs domesticated species anyway.
Fermentation as food pedagogy: insights into how teaching fermentation facilitates engagement with the food system. Are fermentation microbes domesticated?

May 1, 2026May 7, 2026

When the levee breaks

A piece in The Tribune, an English-language daily out of Punjab, reminded me that we have discussed crop diversity and flooding quite a bit here over the years. The article, entitled “Community seed banks help flood-hit Punjab farmers restore crop productivity,” discusses how an initiative of Punjab Agricultural University supported farmers to establish community-level repositories of crop diversity that are turning out to be useful in recovering from recent flood.

Sharing his experience, Paramjeet Singh, a farmer from Baopur Jadid, said that timely access to quality seeds through the community seed bank enabled him to sow his crop without delay and achieve a yield of around 23 quintals per acre.

Farmers acknowledged that the initiative has significantly reduced reliance on outside seed sources, minimised sowing delays, and improved overall crop outcomes. They are also retaining seed of the new wheat variety PBW 872 for the next season. The initiative has strengthened local seed exchange systems and enhanced community preparedness against climate-related challenges. By ensuring the availability of quality seeds within villages, the Community Seed Bank initiative is contributing to sustainable agricultural development and improving the livelihood security of farmers in flood-affected areas.

A couple of points about this are worth noting.

First, only improved varieties are mentioned in the article, but normally community seed banks will also conserve local landraces. I don’t know if this is the case in Punjab, but I do hope so. As Jeremy put it here all of 15 years ago, in a post on a study of rebuilding cowpea cultivation after flooding in Mozambique, that and similar experiences support “the more general conclusion that seeds already in the local system offer the best chance of restoration.” Although do read the comments to that post. It seems that in another case some farmers weren’t particularly interested in recovering the exact varieties they had lost.

Which brings me to the second point. Which is that I also hope that those community seed banks have good links with the national genebank. This can act both as back-up and as a source of new diversity, as I suggested myself in a more recent post after floods in Pakistan.