Ideas worth spreading

Why our future relies on the genetic diversity of food

30,706 views |

Esther Meduna |

TEDxBasel

• May 2016

Should a cauliflower be valued and preserved like the Mona Lisa? What would it mean to us if we lost the cauliflower as a species? The world has experienced a 75 percent decrease in horticultural diversity in the past 150 years. Botanist and educator Esther Meduna explains why this is a problem and how the seed libraries popping up worldwide are helping combat it.

Should a cauliflower be valued and preserved like the Mona Lisa? What would it mean to us if we lost the cauliflower as a species? The world has experienced a 75 percent decrease in horticultural diversity in the past 150 years. Botanist and educator Esther Meduna explains why this is a problem and how the seed libraries popping up worldwide are helping combat it.

This talk was presented to a local audience at TEDxBasel, an independent event.

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About the speaker

Esther Meduna

Botanist

Esther Meduna has loved plants since childhood, a love which eventually led her to study botany in Zurich, where she gave tours for schools through the university’s botanical gardens. Esther came to ProSpecieRara with an extremely broad professional experience in the fields of botany, databases and didactics. Previously, she has worked as a high school teacher, at the Swiss Youth in Science Foundation and in applied biodiversity research. Favourite TED Talk: Birke Baehr, What’s wrong with our food system?

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This talk was presented to a local audience at TEDxBasel, an independent event.

Read more about TEDx.