Join us for a conversation with Louisa Durkin, a food systems expert and member of the Gothenburg Global Biodiversity Centre and biodiversity and agrifood systems analyst at Metabolic, on the importance of biodiversity to our food security.
The food we eat today comes from distinct areas of the world. Each crop or livestock has its own center of biodiversity. Have you ever wondered where a tomato comes from? Did you realize there were no tomatoes in Italy until they were brought over from Latin America? Scientists have traced the origins of food crops back to their "centers of biodiversity" or areas that they came from. Not only is it interesting to find out where food was domesticated (these things didn’t happen simply by accident!) but it’s also very important for food security to protect wild crop relatives. For example, the banana has its center of biodiversity in South Asia (the Indian subcontinent) in the forests. There, the wild relatives of the banana still grow. These forests act as a reservoir of genetic information for the banana. The common banana, known as the Cavendish banana, is - in essence - a clone of itself. This makes them especially vulnerable to disease. Scientists have turned to the wild relatives of the banana to help breed new types that will be resistant to threats of disease, allowing us to continue eating bananas. Here's a cool report on how it was done and a graphic of where foods originated.