Seed saving and plant breeding are two areas that I find particularly interesting. I’ve tried here to gether some of the episodes that address those concerns directly.
- May 22, 2023Accumulating the genetic diversity of birds around the world in a population of truly cosmopolitan chickens
- January 9, 2023How farmers in Belgium and the south of France are taking advantage of new a EU regulation to become more sustainable
- October 17, 2022Organic growers and breeders in Europe are preparing to take advantage of their new freedom to sow biodiversity
- April 18, 2022New studies make sense of tomato’s transformation from teeny-fruited weed to diversity diva.
- April 13, 2020Norman Borlaug gave birth to the Green Revolution, with little thought for the unintended consequences of his work.
- April 30, 2018The number of firms that own the food brands you see is much smaller than you think. That's not good for consumers or suppliers.
- February 5, 2018A second visit to Scariff in County Clare, Ireland, to hear from the people working hard to save Ireland's vegetable heritage and make seeds available to a new generation of gardeners.
- October 23, 2017Apples picked to perfume a room. Undocumented apples and apples with false papers. Foundlings that could give a supermarket apple a run for its money. Others that don't taste too good but are catnip to blackbirds. A heritage orchard in County Clare, Ireland.
- July 31, 2017Wheat growers are making use of hugely diverse evolutionary populations to give them the seeds they need.
- January 9, 2017Is the Carolina Runner No.4 peanut "the first peanut cultivated in North America" and does it matter anyway?
- November 28, 2016If you going to breed vegetables for flavour -- perish the thought -- you need someone to help you decide what's good. Enter the Culinary Breeding Network.
- September 5, 2016A story of exploration, aristocracy and promiscuity, all in the service of better food. What more could you want?
- May 30, 2016Today’s show is something of a departure; I’m talking about someone who is crucial to global food security and yet who is almost unknown. It’s true, as Jean-Henri Fabre, the French naturalist wrote, that “History … knows the names of the king’s bastards but cannot tell us the origin of wheat.” Most people are blissfully unaware of the men and women who created the plant varieties that keep us fed. I say as much at the beginning of the show, when I guess …
- October 7, 2013What, really, is the point of conserving agricultural biodiversity? The formal sector, genebanks and the like, will say it is about genetic resources and having on hand the traits to breed varieties that will solve the challenges tomorrow might throw up. Thousands of seed savers around the world might well agree with that, at least partially. I suspect, though, that for most seed savers the primary reason is surely more about food, about having the varieties they want to eat. David Cavagnaro …
- August 26, 2013Carol Deppe was a guest here a few months ago, talking about how most people misunderstand the potato, which is about as nutritious a vegetable as you could hope for. I found out about that because I was checking out her new book, The Resilient Gardener, which offers all kinds of advice for making the most of home-grown food. In that, Carol talks about having bred a delicata squash with a taste like a medjool date. That sounded intriguing, but in a way not all that surprising. If anyone could …
- May 27, 2013The big question is, why do amateur growers and those who choose not to care even need the protection of EU seed legislation?
p.s. These episodes are actually only a small part of my work on seeds and breeding. Sometimes, for example, I have not been able to record audio, so I write it up, as I did when I interviewed Jack Kloppenburg about the Open Source Seed Initiative. There’s a lot more out there.
