Recently I was being interviewed over the phone by a journalist and was trying to explain why crop diversity is important. “It’s the raw material for plant breeding,” I intoned. Silence on the other end of the line.

It was an inauspicious beginning. Days after the international community failed to establish legally binding measures to halt climate change, the UN launched the International Year of Biodiversity. Scientists predict climate change will directly imperil one-fourth of the Earth’s species.

Bumping along in a Land Rover an hour's drive outside Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Regassa Feyissa, former director of Ethiopia's national genebank, waved his arm towards the fields. "Everything you'll see today that's green is lathyrus". It was literally true.

“Celebrate” is too strong a word perhaps. But this year we observe the 150th anniversary of a combination of events...

I’ve been in southern Norway for a week now and it hasn’t stopped raining. My friends note it’s been coming down steadily for six weeks...

Declarations of sovereignty and independence are not uncommon as rites of passage both for countries and teenagers...

Oxford evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins, makes the argument that were superior creatures from a distant galaxy to visit earth...

Southern Africa, 2030. A throng of emaciated people waits for food rations to arrive. The maize crop has...

As Mae West, the wickedly funny siren of Hollywood movies in the 1930s, put it: ?one figure can sometimes add up to a lot.? In the case of....

Tulips are not food. But...

Repeating melodies and song structures can be found in the music of virtually all cultures.....

Admit it. Together with a cup of coffee, daily headlines - murders, wars, scandals and the like - pump us up.....

Official documents in the field of crop diversity all have a familiar ring to them. Take a look......

Sweden's King Carl XVI Gustaf, known for his concern for the environment, will convene a Royal Colloquium on 'Past Climate Change: Human Survival Strategies' this week...

Adams' apple is extinct. And his beans are gone too. Both apple and bean varieties bearing the name of an early president of the United States have vanished....

The melting snows of Mount Kilimanjaro; the disappearing glaciers...

I don't take hallucinogenic drugs and I don't suppose you do either. So can you explain how it is that agriculture...

Four collections of important crop diversity. Four disasters. Four essential lessons for the future...

The best stamp collections and the worst genebanks have a lot in common. Neither get used for the purpose for which they were intended...

In a classic children?s story, The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams, two toy animals, the Rabbit and the Skin Horse discuss what it means to be Real...