very interresting discussion about climate, but not in the topic of the thread. Do we have a policy about focusness in this forum ? 
So this is just a kind reminder that Thomas is trying to get feedback on his idea of initiating grexes based on scientific litterature, which I am also curious to read.
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The vikings raiding the topic eh! Typical!
Good you didn’t freeze Jesse!
I’ve gathered quite some useful info in between the happy chatter.
So, the gène banks do not provide that much info at all about soil types and climates.
But should i see it like this then? If they’re based in France, they’re more likely to have mostly seeds that work there… And if not… Will they specify that?
Is it even standardised? Or do they all do their own thing?
Cathy doesn’t care because differing varieties behave differently to 24-7 sunlight and some surprisingly good.
How is it anyway with commercial plantbreeders? Do they make much use of gène banks? Or some do, some never?
I’ve spoken to a French plantbreeder, he told me he was there when biological farming became a thing in France. He said there wasn’t a lot of choice seed wise. They imported a lot. Swiss i think he mentioned. Anyway he created his own melonvariety by mixing thirteen varieties mostly from abroad. He was very pleased to hear about what we did and he taught young people about breeding and basicly said landracing was the future.
I’ve not asked him about genebanks.
I’d love to send him the book when it’s finally available in French.
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It took me a while to get here! but now have fixed it. The current de-facto policy is to let people go off topic if they want to, and many people have the ability to split topics off to create new ones. I just gave you the powers and encouragement to do so when needed 
I think many moderators make better forums.
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Hi everybody and @isabelle, and thank you so much for your great summary and contributions, such studies are (mainly?) called “core collections”,
" The core collection is a small subset that minimizes genetic redundancy while preserving the maximum genetic diversity of the entire population" . This quotation is taken from a 2023 publication summarising their history (starting from 1984) : Forests | Free Full-Text | Developments on Core Collections of Plant Genetic Resources: Do We Know Enough?
(personnally I don’t get much about their methodology and statistical methods but I
believe getting the list of accessions at the end of their work is enough to create very wide modern landraces - genetically-speaking)
Another semantic entry would be “population structure” .One exemple for Cucurbita moschata Plants | Free Full-Text | Population Structure and Genetic Diversity of Cucurbita moschata Based on Genome-Wide High-Quality SNPs .
" 4. Materials and Methods
4.1. Plant Materials and Phenotypic Evaluation
The total of 610 C. moschata accessions, which were originally from 42 countries, were collected from the National Agrobiodiversity Center Rural Development Administration (RDA) in Korea and the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) of United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)." (…)… At the end of their study they extract 67 accessions (see Table 3 here Population structure and genetic diversity of Cucurbita moschata based on genome-wide high-quality SNPs)
Just to give you an example, but I am no specialist. We could find many others, maybe more practicable.
I listened to this very interesting conference this morning, with many info and some quite comprehensive about the Standard Material Transfer Agreements : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uswT_C3oAzY
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I have mixed feelings too about the overall idea: don’t want to spend too much time over-thinking (my fear) but on the other side I know that if I could access - without putting too much effort in it- the widest possible genetics of watermelon for example, within let’s say 40 varieties, and then share with others at stage f1 or f2 for their own local or regional adaptation I would run for it, and would be so happy. And anyway, I would be enjoying it from seedlings to harvest, looking at so diverse plants, which is what I love : why not a gift from the world to take care of, and then share. Then bye-bye publications, databases, computers, and this thinking effort… I imagine it as some temporary winter work, like I have been used to over the last winters: just scrolling down the overall european Internet looking for crazy squashes, watermelons, etc in order to assemble new grexes, the most diverse possible, as I understood it had to be to undertake the greatest breeding journey possible, towards tasteful, robust, locally adapted modern landraces… And that activity in winter time, on a computer, so far from the garden but at a season were there is not much happening, helped me getting much more diversity than I could have found on all french seed swaps, I must say. And this I can share right now within the community.
…No good on the long run if it was meant to become some kind of permanent work, needing specialised people, specialised networks, specialised understandings, so specialised trainings, specialised blablas of all kinds, and which in return would select specialised people within the community, but great if it is a one time thing, which goes simple and easy, fast and helps the community. That is how I was figuring it, and still… But for now the EU Serendipity Seed Swap is doing great. We have and will have loads to share, and get to know each other a little more…
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Hi, guys! Someone gently pointed out to me that I said something up the thread that could’ve been misunderstood. So let me correct myself.
I think we should ditch anxiety. If you’re doing something because you feel like you “should,” even though it stresses you out, maybe look for another approach that makes you happier.
Some people LOVE record-keeping, hand-crossing, reading scientific literature, and/or other very-hands-on approaches. If you are a person who enjoys something that most people don’t, please do it! Chances are you have something unique and special to contribute that a lot of people need, and will greatly appreciate benefiting from.
Precisely because most people don’t enjoy things like finicky record-keeping, the people who enjoy doing it are capable of creating tremendous value that may be unique.
And, let me add: I am one of those people! I love deep-diving into super, super detailed, teeny little details of everything. I enjoy it so much that I can often get lost in the weeds, and then I need to “zoom out,” look at the big picture, and simplify because I’m getting too anxious and stressed out over details that honestly won’t make all that big a difference. But sometimes my super finicky detail-oriented mindset can be of great value.
I admire Joseph Lofthouse’s “just let things do what they’re going to do” approach precisely because that’s not my natural personality, and I tend to need more of that mindset in my life in order to stay in balance.
I very much admire and appreciate the work of detail-oriented people, and I think that as long as they’re enjoying being detail-oriented, they should keep up the good work.
I think the best way to create things is to find the approach that makes you the happiest. If it’s something most people enjoy, great! If it’s something very few other people enjoy, great! Just do what suits you.
Ditch anxiety and seek joy.
Okay, I hope that’s a little bit clearer.
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Hello alltogether, hi Thomas,
I want to give my 2cents to this discussion:
in Germany it is quite easy to get accessions from the national genebank as a private person. I got accessions of potatoes for around 10 years now and accession of Allium cepa (onions), Papaver somniferum (opium poppies) and Phaseolus coccineus (scarlet runner beans) once.
They want to know what you want to do with the accessions; but you can just say: I want to test them as a private person.
You have to sign the SMTA; but this is only from importance if you want to breed with the genetic material and want to commercialize it as a new variety later. Then you have to share your profit…
I am mixing/letting cross as much varieties and accessions as possible without any artificial (positive) selection; natural (negative) selection is the only selection nature and I do.
Because I could grow some species on the fields of my brother, space is not a limiting factor for me (I got around 3 kilogram of onion seeds last year).
One very important point I want to put my finger on is “Genetic diversity” and “Core collections”.
The scientists who counting alleles oversee the most important point: the allele combinations. The individual allele combination is the important thing for adaption (surviving) not a special allele.
Special alleles are only important for breeders who want to combine alleles in a new (inbreeding) variety.
For us as landrace gardeners are only of interst the allele combinations, the different, genetically unique individuals. For this we should mix ererything together we could get our hands on and share it worldwide. Seedsaving is the most important step to get new and more allele combinations, new mutations and new starting points by “gene drift” (getting only a small subset of the genes of a bigger population).
Grow and propagate everything you want; after ten years you will get a “landrace”, a locally adapted population - or you will have lost the whole population.
Growing landraces is the same people does for millenia: growing a population every year and saving seeds from it every year. Negative (natural) selection is the only selection people does for millenia - and that we should do as landrace gardeners today and in the future; nothing else…
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The intent behind this idea was somehow to hack the system by accessing very fast very diversified genetics that will recombine in the widest combinations possible… it was to access a maximum diversity easily without having to go through thousands of accessions with barely any info on them, so no cues on the real diversity we gather.
It was thought as a possibly easy and fast way to access maximum diversity, without using thousands of accessions, knowing that it’s the recombination that we’re looking for… if some of us wanted to deal with seed banks!
Which is not my personal case anymore.
It was also a parallel line of thought to the creation of the European database of seed sellers I/we did, to access diversity to create the widest grexes as fast as possible as our economies could be on the verge - or at risk - of collapsing, understanding that diversity was key and that we may not be able to access much diversity ar some point.
I haven’t read all the thread so forgive me if I missed anything. But you can request seeds as a private individual, just ask. At least I have been able to in the UK. They did ask me for a processing and handling fee and postage, and a few questions about what I wanted the seeds for. I had a nice dialogue with the researchers that work there and was able to withdraw many accessions of seeds for my barley landrace.
In my experience, researchers, gene bank staff, people from universities and scientists have all been very receptive and easy to talk to and approach, regarding asking questions, requesting seed or sharing your ideas with. I wouldn’t hesitate to ask.
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Yes thanks Geoffrey 
, I’ve had same type of experiences woth open minded employees.
Here we created a thread around accessing biodiversity via seed banks with a few tips :
I hope that you see that this conclusion was utterly dogmatic, rigid, thus based on a conception, essentially true in certain crops (cereals) but more or less unrelevant in others… Because if, in this… let’s call it “millenia long true-to-type pure and perfect landracing” humans didn’t discard the bad, didn’t favour the better, explain why there is so much qualitative diversity?
That’s solely natural, result of “negative” selection?
Also this conception condemns every traditional seed keepers I know of… if they certainly don’t abide by any Distinctiveness Uniformity Stability criteria, they also don’t abide by the (mis)conception you bring in : it’s just simply more nuanced… a spectrum if you prefer : starting from the sole natural selection yes, then to moderate to more intensive… for ex from discarding the bad to favouring the best…
Just one example in South America : we know that the Andes are a hotspot for diversity, notably for potatoes… what’s the traditional way of doing in the valleys of Peru ? How did the increase of diversity occured ? Simple : all potatoes are fertile there, so a year past a potato harvest with many different kinds of potatoes as it’s traditional in the valleys (see it as a family, called a chakra) they look for offsprings of these (TPS) in next season and screen them, looking for qualities, adding some to their chakras because of qualities, discarding others… that’s how it grew from a couple wild types barely edible (still growing on the fields margins! And so regularly crossed…) to many many many many many many new forms, with 5 to 6 main different culinary purposes…
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Thomas, I don’t know why you call my conception (negative=natural selection) a misconception, dogmatic and rigid?
What you describe (the traditional selection of potatoes in the Andes) is exactly what I mean: The people select all potatoes they like and count as useful, and discard all others. They propagate a lot of different individuals.
That’s the way a maximum diversity is created and maintained; that’s the “natural way” (natural selection = all individuals, which are able to reproduce will prolong the “chain of life”)
Artificial=positive selection by humans is to propagate only the best, mostly very few similar individuals, in the extreme case only one individual. That’s the way diversity of our crops have minimized in the last two centuries - and that we should change worldwide by growing landraces in a certain percentage and doing traditional (natural/negative) selection as you described it…
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Ok so I understand you better now.
There was a misunderstanding here based on semantics : you wrote that natural selection (“negative”) was the only thing human did, and that’s where the misunderstanding come from : on this forum when we talk about natural selection (like in Landrace Gardening book, GTS publications, videos…) we talk about selection made by nature in the field : favouring some plants, discarding some WITHOUT human intervention.
Like Joseph repeats “nature does 80% of the selection work”, in particular at the grex stage. “Natural” there implies there that there is zero human intervention.
The problem is solely with that association of word “natural selection” with some human selection (“negative”). Reading “negative (natural) selection is the only thing human does for millenia” I thought you meant human never did a thing: “nature” did it and human took all the seeds. I’m sure it’s what everybody there would understand. And then the “we should” moment following that seemed rigid and dogmatic in regards to that conception that sounded really far fetched to me.But I get you now. Problem solved
And the same difference of vocabulary exist in the seed keeping communities I’m in : natural selection being seen as non-human, or before human intervention, then negative being discarding the “worse” (or “off-types” in OPs), positive standing for favoring the “best” (higher yielding, best tasting, etc.). So in my personal experience this selection semantics is not bound to this platform.