Dr. Eastwood presents Crop Wild Relatives: diversity, conservation and crop adaptation
Ruth Eastwood presented the project on the 6th March at a free public lecture series on Food Security – maintaining resources in the age of globalisation of trade. This public lecture series was hosted by GEDS, Birkbeck University of London and explored the issues of meeting increasing population demands, food production and its potential fragility on environmental factors and how much of the solutions to these problem will be affected by climate change.

Seedy Sunday

Seedy Sunday Poster

Danielle Haddad, CWR Communications Assistant attended Seedy Sunday on the 1st February in Brighton. Seedy Sunday is the UK’s largest community seed swap and promotes seed saving, protecting heritage varieties and protecting local crops and seeds.

CWR Communications Assistant Danielle at Seedy Sunday

The event is focused around swapping and buying seeds but also had stalls featuring various conservation groups, plant, seed, and garden orientated companies as well as delicious food and drink. The aim was to spread the word about the project, and whilst Danielle was busily swapping seeds she also passed along leaflets about the project in order to promote it and raise awareness.

Kew on a Plate

World-renowned chef Raymond Blanc, and Kate Humble successful BBC TV presenter come farmer featured in a mouth-watering gardening and cooking show – Kew on a Plate. Together with experts at Kew, the show revived the historical heritage of vegetables through a vegetable garden grown at Kew which provided a wide and beautiful variety of heritage vegetables that Raymond used to create delectable dishes. This four part series incorporated science, stories and recipes documented throughout the four seasons of spring, summer, autumn and winter. Dr. Eastwood was featured in the winter episode of the series and presented the project and the work at the Millennium Seed Bank to Kate Humble.

Voice of America – Scientists Go to Extremes to Save Food Crops’ Wild Relatives
The Voice of America news ran a feature and video on crop wild relatives in California and mentioned the storage of seeds at Kew.

Written by : Danielle Haddad, Communications Assistant for the Crop Wild Relatives Project