Foods of the Future

We're on a collision course with extinction. Many current food systems and farming practices are simply not sustainable. Food security is going to be one of the biggest challenges of the next century. And we really need We need everyone to be interested in this topic of food security and climate change. For too long we've been reducing the diversity of crops that we grow.

decimating habitats and removing more soil than we can put back. Our climate is warming and the weather is more intense. That means that even as science races to seek solutions and alternatives to feed us for the future, These options are often disappearing faster than we can find them. Our grandchildren and great grandchildren would have very bland diets, if I could say that, and a lot of processed and chemical alternatives added to their foods. In the face of forest fires

Floods, soil erosion, and extreme temperatures, we can simply no longer grow the same things that we always have, and in some places because ecosystems are dying. We need to take action now. So what are the foods our children's children will be eating? And how useful is your go-to recipe book going to be in fifty years time? I'm James Wong, and this time, discover the foods in our future in unearthed journeys into the future of food from the Royal Botanic Gardens queue.

And uh this one over here is Mario. Mm-hmm. And together we founded Scharpensauer studio uh a couple of years ago. We basically use food as a medium to explore complex realities and complex issues, uh in a way that makes it more approachable for everyone. In Kew Gardens there's this huge glasshouse and it's a beautiful glasshouse and in front of it there's this massive grass field basically that is normally empty but this time is filled with

There's big kind of totems we could call them. And there's like a bigger kind of like structure full of podiums with some glass cases and inside those glass cases you can see different foods. They are all nine foods that are endangered for many different reasons, mainly climate crisis you can find their coffee or you can find bananas, you can find seafood in general. Also next to those you can see a couple of totems, like smaller ones with

other endangered foods and also with already extinct foods. That is something that probably people don't know already. We've had already foods that have gone extinct from pigeons that we used to eat to a really weird plant that the Romans used to use for cooking as a as a spice. I think it it it putting anything a food in a display case it always has that effect. Like all of a sudden it becomes more precious, more valuable. And people like actually

pay attention to it or look at it for a different lens. Chocolate, coffee, wine, those three were the ones where people were more like, Really? Like, I had no idea. Or like, oh my God, a world without coffee, you know? I saw a small girl with her father and one of the questions was Would you give up your favorite foods in order to save the world's biodiversity? And she said like, Oh well, you know what?

I think you said yes, but I'm gonna say no. I I want my favorite food. I mean it was cute but it was like she is right, I mean we and older generations are the ones causing the problem. And we are asking to new generations to stop eating things that We've enjoyed before in order to save the world. And this also applies to like developing countries. We have developed our countries so bad, uh and to the point that we are causing this climate crisis. And we are asking now to the

less developed countries, if I can say that, to not do it. To not do the same. The stories that Mario and Maria are using their design skills to tell are all born from insights made by scientists studying how the world's food crops and plant species are faring in the face of change.

By understanding the threats to our much-loved foods, we can experiment with how to protect them in the future. But even as we realize this, there is much more research still to do in order to find solutions to these problems.

I'm Dr. Carly Cowell. I'm Head of Conservation Policy and Science Communications. Crops such as coffee aren't adaptable to higher temperatures. Crops such as potatoes don't like drought and they need pollination from bees. And then things like bananas and olives are susceptible to diseases that are wiping out the cultivars we're relying on for these crops that we see in the supermarkets. Like grapes, which we get wine from, are also under threat. They rely on specific soil types and climates.

And this is reducing with climate change. So the grape varieties that make all the different wines that we have are reducing. So we could see a reduction in wine as well as um avocados. Avocados do need a lot of water. Um, they are susceptible to diseases and many avocados are based on once again one or two individual cultivars. So avocados might be disappearing.

Today we're at Wakehurst in West Sussex. This is where I'm pretty much sitting on a daily basis dealing with policy, but also interacting with all my colleagues across the globe. Without the work that that Q and its partners are doing looking at wild genes and diversity of different crops we could see a very different plate of food in front of our grandchildren and maybe great grandchildren in the future, with

crops missing with food sips missing completely, bread being made of something completely different, the variety of fruit and vegetables really cut down. We probably wouldn't be seeing banana. a lot of our red fruits and berries, which are pollinated by bees, probably wouldn't see. Um, potatoes could be gone completely and that's a staple in a lot of households, particularly up here in the north.

And then maize meal, um, corn. Corn we could see pretty much gone with only a few varieties still growing. So our health would not be great, um which would increase costs in medical and hospital. So overall it's not looking good for us or the environment. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species is the most authoritative source on the extinction risk of animal and plant species.

I am Jack Plummer, and I am the Plant Assessment Coordinator at the Royal Botanic Gardens Q, and in my role I facilitate and oversee the completion of assessments for the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species by Q Scientist and Q Partners. So we're in the uh palm house at Kew and it's pretty warm in here at the moment.

And we're standing next to a Mae'n rwy'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio. ychydig ychydig ychydig ychydig ychydig ychydig ychydig ychydig ychydig When we think of bananas, there are 89 wild species of banana, but there are about 1200 cultivated varieties.

ac mae'r grŵp sy'n ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r hynny. In the wild they're not just yellow. There are a variety of different colours of bananas. The inflorescence can vary dramatically in colour. You can get yellow, orange, red, purple.

Rydyn ni'n gwneud hynny, ond rwy'n rwy'n rwy'n rwy'n rwy'n rwy'n rwy'n rwy'n rwy'n rwy'n rwy'n rwy'n rwy'n rwy'n rwy'n rwy'n rwy'n rwy'n rwy'n rwy'n rwy'n rwy'n rwy'n rwy'n rwy'n The export banana trade for dessert bananas is based at ninety-nine percent

of it is based on a single variety which is the Cavendish. This means that if something were to happen to the Cavendish, it would affect the whole global crop. Now, lots of crops, but particularly bananas, are often grown in monocultures and Mae monocultwyr yn ymwneud â llawer o'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r hyn. If plants are genetically identical

it means that they are more kind of susceptible to abiotic and biotic stresses. So abiotic stresses are things like drought, salinity, and biotic stresses are things like pests and diseases.

Felly, os nad yw'r plant yn yw'r plant yn yw'r genetid yn yw'r plant yn yw'r plant yn yw'r plant yn yw'r plant yn yw'r plant yn yw'r plant yn yw'r plant yn yw'r plant yn yw'r plant yn yw'r plant yn yw'r plant yn yw'r plant yn yw'r plant yn yw'r plant yn yw'r plant yn yw'r plant yn yw'r plant yn yw'r plant yn yw'r plant yn yw'r plant yn yw'r plant yn yw'r plant.

Now the problem for bananas is that this is really amplified to a global scale. Because we are so reliant on this single variety, it means that it's plausible that the entire global harvest can be affected by a single disease. It has happened before. We used to rely on a different variety of banana. So if you were walking around the shops in the early 1900s, you'd have seen a different variety of banana. Not the Cavendish we know today, but a variety called the Grote Michelle.

and it was grown in the same way and was similarly susceptible to disease. And unfortunately a disease did arise called Panama disease, which is caused by the fungus Fusarium oxysporum Former Special Cubensae which can it can be uh shortened to Fok. And that actually decimated the global harvest for export. So there was a a time in the nineteen fifties, nineteen sixties when there were no bananas, there was a global shortage.

Yn ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud. There are a few different ways which we could look to try and solve this problem. One is by breeding the banana we have and creating new cultivars. The other is by diversifying the range of species that we actually use. And perhaps one of the most promising avenues would be the use of yn ymwneud â'r genedig o'r genedig o'r genedig o'r genedig o'r genedig o'r genedig o'r genedig o'r genedig o'r genedig

are technically quite close to the crop plant. Now for other crops it's somewhat easier to transfer that genetic information, but because the banana is sterile it makes it more difficult. However, with advances in breeding technologies, we are increasingly able to transfer this genetic information from more distantly related plants.

what we need to do as the consumer is really think about do we have to have that perfect yellow curved banana that that we're used to or are we happy to start trying different alternatives and that's the same across all all crops and all food.

I've I think I've been culpable of it in the past, looking for these kind of really n neat and tidy fruit and vegetables, but really we we shouldn't be reliant on that. They all taste the same. Some of them probably taste better but look worse. So that's something which we can actually do in our in our daily lives.

Today, we're in the glasshouse of the Millennium Seed Bank building at Wakehurst, where we're doing some experiments on banana plants. And a lot of these plants have various. Projects that we're working on to see whether they can grow in cultivation. They could be extinct in the wild back in their original country or they are so few numbers we don't want to harvest seed from the wild.

And each and every collection in the seed bank is based on an agreement with the origin country of how we can use those genetic resources and those seeds. And some of them we can grow the plants, uh we cannot commercialise them or use them in any other way other than for specific research.

So this room that we're standing in now has quite a few succulent plants in it and some more dry, arid, not so not so many humid tropical plants, even though as I say there is about four giant banana trees, bushes next to us. So what we have here we've got um four or five pots of wild relatives of banana. Which we are testing and and growing to to look at their growth habits. They're testing their DNA for genetic resistance to diseases.

They they don't produce the kind of bananas that we see in the shop, big nice yellow fruit, but they do produce banana shaped fruit. Sometimes it comes out in different colours, sometimes it remains green or doesn't go yellow as we're used to. But they are all bananas and really they're working to help their cultivated hybrid relatives. So looking at these banana plants that we have at Wac now, there's a variety of of growth forms, some have many stems.

We have one that's really nice and big with big green leaves as you would imagine a banana to look like. There's a smaller one in the background, really good green leaves as well, and good growth form. There's another one that's looking a bit brown and and crispy round the edges, maybe not faring so well in the in the heat wave that the UK is experiencing right now, but that's a good test. for climate change and adaptation and we'll monitor how that one bounces back or maybe not over time.

But there's a variety of of heights and thickness and different stems in these pots. They're not all the same. And that is what we want. We want diversity in our crops. The banana is just one example of a much beloved food that's extremely vulnerable to extinction. So alongside all of the plant science that's happening to learn about wild populations and explore their different qualities, it's down to us to be a little bit more open to trying new things.

It's summertime in Bethlehem Wood in Wakehurst. In a clearing amongst the trees, two scientists are about to see an artwork based on their research for the very first time. It's a tall, thatched wooden structure, like a Sidama house, an Ethiopian style of building. Ethiopia is home to one of the world's most diverse food crops, with a vast number of different land races or varieties.

NSET is known as the false banana and feeds 20 million people there. So how could this food crop solve food scarcity in other parts of the world? My name is Dr. James Burrell. I'm a research fellow at Kew and one of the areas we work on a lot is NSET from Ethiopia with our collaborators in Ethiopia. My name is Dr. Ronda. I'm from Ethiopia. Uh I came from Hawasa University, it's in the southern region where NSET is a culture in one. So what is NSET?

NSET is a a relative of banana. So we're all familiar with bananas, one of the world's most widely traded crops, a hundred million tonnes produced a year. And bananas are from Southeast Asia and there's about 70 or 80 species and we use predominantly just two of them. Now NSET is from a sister genus, and what I mean by that it's like a cousin of bananas that's much less well known.

Some of them are native to Africa, but one in particular called NSET ventricosum is native to Ethiopia and has become a staple crop for twenty million people. So it's incredibly important in a narrow region, but it's very, very poorly known elsewhere. There are you know more than 100 different varieties. Basically insect is used as a food, it could be it is also used as a source of fiber, it is used for cattle feed. some are medicinal you know

Actually m most land races are basically used as a food. That diversity is absolutely spectacular. The average farmer is growing seven, eight, nine different types on on his or her farm. And they're specialised for different uses as well? Yeah, because relatively you know, a single insert uh if you have An individual insect could feed family something like for 15 days because it's highly productive. That's one important thing.

The other one is unlike other crops, for example if you take maize you just plant it and you will get the product you know at some time of the year. But when it comes to insect, as long as you have different batch You can you can harvest any time of the year, even during drought.

The other important feature is I think relatively compared to other crops it's also drought resistant. We think. Another project on that at the moment, just to make sure that's really true. So why is NSET such an important food security crop? The thing about NSET is it's a standing food source, it's an enormous amount of carbohydrate and you can use it exactly when you need it. And that's better than having a bank account. You know, that is a it's like a a stock of food.

And that's why NSET gets the name in Ethiopia the Tree Against Hunger. Tree against Hunger, yeah, correct. There's a huge amount of knowledge associated with NSET cultivation. Without that knowledge, which is held and owned by the farmers that have been developing NSAT as a crop for thousands of years, then it's essentially useless. And so you can o it's only valuable when you combine the the genetic diversity and and the science.

with the indigenous knowledge that farmers have. And collaborating with those farmers is i is absolutely essential to understanding anything about N sex evolution.

We're at Wakehurst and we are just in Bethlehem Wood on our way to see the false banana pavilion. and this is an art installation that is associated with our work on NSET, the work we're collaborating with our colleagues in Ethiopia to study NSET diversity. And wow we're just coming up. We're just walking along the grass now and we can see this

sort of thatched structure nestled in a little clearing in all the trees. We've got a glorious sunny day for it, so we're very lucky. And we are just gonna come round the corner and and peer inside and and see exactly how this thing is made. The material looks like that of most people living in the south, which use insert as the building material to build their house.

Okay, so we're just peering inside and um and it's a well it's a bit dark and then there's light coming down through inside but the most amazing thing is all around the wall are N set leaves or or pieces of wood carved to look like N set leaves. Yeah. Chamo, Gimboa, Netwe, Kiticho. You have Kiticho here as well. Yep, the big one. The big one. This is like a a way of visualizing that amazing diversity.

If you're familiar with different types of apple in a supermarket, so you might have Cox, Brayburn, Gala, these are all different types. of of the same species. And when farmers have developed them we call them farmers' land races. And NSAED is particularly unusual because it's grown in a very small region by comparatively quite a small number of people.

but we have recorded more than fifteen hundred different names for N Set. And that's what's really remarkable about this this building here at Wakehurst is we've got all these names and the regions they're from on uh leaves all around the walls and the ceiling. Exceptional. Very nice to see this. In the UK. Food security is is gonna be one of the biggest challenges of the next century. Having an art installation like this helps us.

Talk to different people. And we really need everyone to be interested in this topic of of food security and climate change. And so this can only only help us really make progress in that. So it's really exciting to see. NSET is not only diverse and productive all year round, but it also grows at really varied altitudes and has incredible nutritional value, making it a great crop to grow in different regions too.

Having staple crops that can handle tough conditions and have the diversity to adapt is vital for future food security.

And now to Colombia. Have you heard of the Paramos? Here in one of the world's most biodiverse countries, these high-elevation environments, far above the tree line, are abundant with grasses and bushes that act like mighty sky sponges. The vegetation here holds water that not only provides a stunningly biodiverse ecosystem, but provides food, medicine and construction materials through the plants it supports downstream.

The Paramos are a culture and way of life for the people that live there or rely on their livelihoods from them. And in the region of Boyaca, Q researchers are working to understand about the vast ecosystem services this environment provides to all the lives it sustains. But in the face of climate change, this way of life is under threat. No crop, no food, and no life can continue without the water from the Paramount. Plants here are threatened by changes in climate and rainfall patterns.

And by the middle of the century, several species could undergo extinction. The whole unique ecosystem here is predicted to significantly shrink in size. We need to study existing plants and habitats to find out how nature is adapting to and benefiting from the harsh conditions we might see more of in the future. So that we can change our own habits and look for crops that can survive them.

Next to the American Prairie at Wakehurst on a scorching July day. Ellie Wildings sheltering from the heat in a gazebo surrounded by a sea of yellow prairie flowers. My name is Ellie Wilding and I am a PhD student in Plant Sciences at the University of Cambridge. Ecosystem services are basically the benefits that we gain from an ecosystem and they could be anything from provisional services which could be the production of food or timber.

They could be supporting services such as flood regulation. They could be cultural or recreational which could include things like education, tourism or a spiritual connection to the landscape.

Fire is a pretty fundamental regulating role in the ecosystem, especially because Ecosystem services come from biodiversity and fire is key in shaping the biodiversity of a landscape and it does that through creating different structures within the habitats, different ecological niches, but also through Mae'n ymwneud â'r pethau a'r pethau a'r pethau a'r pethau a'r pethau a'r pethau a'r pethau a'r pethau a'r pethau a'r pethau a'r pethau a'r pethau.

Fire plays an integral role in shaping the ecosystems that we have on our planet today, and also it plays this massive role with climate change. And climate change is is something that affects fire regimes and fire regimes are something that affects climate change. So there's kind of this inherent link between climate and fire.

I mean fires are a natural occurrence. They they can be naturally ignited by lightning, by humans, or just accidentally ignited through kind of, you know, barbecues or anything like that. So it is something that has occurred throughout time and there's evidence that goes back to show that early hominids learnt control fire two million years ago. So this is not a new thing.

and fire has played a role in our landscapes for a really long time. And it's also what has provided us with the open landscapes that we have at the moment. For example, in a lot of the UK, you wouldn't have Heathland exist without things like fire. 'cause fire is considered to be a biomass altering disturbance, but it's something that really cuts everything back.

So when a fire affects an ecosystem, so say for example, similar to the the ecosystem that we're looking at now, which is the North American Prairie at Wake Kirk. We can see in front of us there's a lot of kind of herbaceous grass species and there's also some sporadic tree growth. So this is the kind of system that I look at.

And in a system like this you would have the herbaceous layer when a fire comes along, it will be burnt and you'll lose that herbaceous layer. But lots of other things also happen under the ground. Above the surface, you see a loss of vegetation. What that means below the surface is that you're getting pyrogenic carbon going into the soil, which adds carbon to the soil and enriches it.

ond mae llawer sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n to cope with fire and therefore are damaged much more destructively than an ecosystem that is evolved with fire would. In terms of kind of how this works with food and and I guess agriculture as well, slash and burn fires in forests.

This is often used to clear land for agriculture and it's that kind of burning which can sometimes be really damaging because they're often quite uncontrolled. what you kind of really need with a fire is fire breaks. You light it in certain conditions. Which means that everything is kind of controlled, but when you clear for agriculture, there often isn't these control mechanisms to kind of keep it contained. And that's when you often see a lot of fires really spread and go wild.

Crop pod relatives have this huge amount of genetic diversity. and plants that grow in fire prone ecosystems also have this genetic diversity. I think it's just the idea of steering away from putting all of our eggs in one basket really and embracing the kind of the wildness that plants give us and embracing their natural diversity. And it's a complex system but they can definitely teach us a lot.

Fire is part of our future. As the climate warms, understanding how ecosystems behave under fire and how different wild plants respond could be crucial in finding crops that can provide fire-friendly food in the future. But understanding the problematic agricultural and growing practices that lead to the spread of fire could also be a huge step forward in making sure that there's secure food for all.

But I wanted to end this episode back in Kew Gardens in London. The Georgian kitchen garden there has only just been refurbished and reopened to the public. I went along to meet Helena Dove to hear how she's been ushering in a whole new generation of future-proof food crops and experimenting with some too.

So I'm really excited to come to the one bit of queue that I don't know very well, and that's only'cause it's just opened a couple of weeks ago. I've taken five minutes to escape into the shade underneath the pergola because The temperature's hitting thirty degrees, above thirty degrees today, middle of summer. And I'm so lucky to be here with Helena, who is in charge of all of this, that can explain what's going on.

Cool, so we're starting the new edible science garden at Kew, which is the kitchen garden by other name. Uh we just reopened after having ripped everything out and started again to make the whole place more accessible.

But also a bit more sustainable. Tell me what you've got growing here. What have we got grow? We've got a bit of everything, to be honest with you. We've got the stars of the show, the tomatoes. Yep, absolutely. Which we love. They're growing really fast actually now. Now we've now we've got the temperatures up. They they're off. They're winning. We've been pretty epic this year and they've tipped out all the beans and I I was despairing for a week.

And they've all gone back again, so you know so reassuring that you have problems too. Oh gosh, I have loads of problems and and I don't hide them from the public. In fact what I do is I've got these amazing boards that I can just write, This is what's happened, this is what's gone wrong

there's no point hiding this information'cause you don't want people to feel it's unattainable. I want people to go, Oh, I can manage that and oh I mean last year we got blight. Everyone got blight last year, right? So we do the traditional, as you say, so that people can see how to do it in their own garden. But we're also trying

plants that we maybe aren't used to seeing in this country or haven't been grown at all. So for example I struggle with lettuces in the middle of summer. It is very hot in this kitchen garden. It's walled and it's under a flight path and it's in the middle of London, which adds a few degrees. Rydyn ni'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd.

I've also got some alternate root crops, so I find that main crop potatoes are very tricky in this space. They often get blight or they don't look very good. They often go brown quite rapidly. So rather than growing main crop potatoes, which are hard for a lot of people, we're trying some other crops, so things like dahlias who've got edible roots, ocha mashuas. So for example, we're sat right next to this

bed, which is people have questioned me what is going on here. This is Oh my god, it's a big mishmash of lots of different things. It's I mean it's very beautiful uh and it's a bit of an experiment for me but I'm working with the scientists who they're working in Ethiop Ethiopia. And they're looking at farming practices. Half of Ethiopia is basically in famine.

And the other half is not, and the main difference is the way they farm. So the farming technique we've got next to us, which isn't the full farming technique, it's simply a sample. is basically growing loads of different crops in one small area rather than one monoculture, which if that fails, you've lost your crop. So for example we've got things like safflower, which they use for oil.

Which we could also in this country use for oil, which considering we're having issues getting sunflower oil, could be an alternate crop for us as well. But then they've also got things like roux, which is poisonous, but they can use the root. As a coffee substitute. We've also got things like castor oil plants, which again notoriously quite poisonous, but you can use the oil out of them. So they grow in everything in one small space, so they're very self sufficient, but also they'll grow

different types of wheat. So if one wheat goes down they've got another to back up. So it's just a very small example of of this work and the scientists at Kew are still ongoing with this for another few years and we're hoping to disseminate that work.

Yeah, a lot of traditional British uh horticultural techniques are basically watered down agricultural techniques. So you're if you plant cabbages, you plant them all in a nice neat row. Because that's what you'd do if you had 10 acres of cabbages. But this kind of diverse mixing together really works better on that small scale, it makes everything more resilient.

So it's the hottest day of the year today. Uh uh it's it may get hotter than this and it's supposed to break all records, thirty four degrees or something like that. What does this sort of approach of learning about resilience and mixing things together and and trying crops from all over the world and and really exploring diversity? What does that mean given challenges like climate?

Well it means that hopefully we will have crops that will thrive in twenty years time if it gets Mae'n ymwneud yn ymwneud yn ymwneud yn ymwneud yn ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud.

I'm notoriously terrible at cooking. So I need to know for the ochre, for example, w how do you cook it? Because that's the question people always ask. So The hope is that if the climate gets hotter and hotter and hotter and and in twenty years time we're saying thirty degrees is normal, which I can't imagine is ever gonna be the case, but just on the off chance That we have crops that will thrive and we're not lastminute.com trying to uh to figure out what we can eat.

Right in front of us we've got strawberry sticks. These beautiful little red seed balls, basically, which are look like strawberries. They really do. They're quite sweet. on a hot sunny day. Most things in the Amaranthasi family actually have an edible leaf. That doesn't bolt, that doesn't need a lot of water. It often needs a little cooking. You often can't eat it raw, it's got oxalates on it that actually aren't that pleasant, but it's a great alternative to spinach.

I think what this bed really proves is that growing unusual edibles isn't just for an educational point of view or from a kind of a novelty point of view. Here it's really practical. You can't grow the conventional lettuce. So that this is where we understand that, you know, looking at this diversity

actually solves important problems and with things like climate change that's gonna become increasingly vital. Oh, definitely. So tell me about you have a spot here which I think is really inspirational and I tell you why. You have a giant magnolia that's at least a hundred years old I'm guessing. Yeah. From the size of it, spreading branches. And it's completely shaded out this bed.

I can't see you've got anything at the moment, but shady environments under trees are basically impossible to grow most veg. So what's gonna go in here? Well this magnolia is a it's a very special magnolia I'm told,'cause it's uh evergreen and it's a summer flowering one, so it's Magnolia del Avi.

Which gives me a very shady spot and it's fairly dry. So what we're actually gonna do is grow some mushrooms under here. Oh Yeah, mushrooms are super easy. Mushrooms. Q does a lot of work with fungi, but it's very hard for us to show visitors what we do. Because fungi generally pop up for about a week And we have a real variety on site, but it's very hard to label them for example'cause they literally disappear again.

So this will be a nice site to talk about the work we do with Fungi at Q. What have you learnt here that would be really applicable to your average back garden? Well I I actually started growing in pots, I rented and landlords are very not keen on you digging up their lawns. So I've done a little bed here which I'm calling the urban bed because it's often in urban environments that you struggle to have a lot of space to show what you can do with a small space.

So things like companion planting, we've got it here the three sisters, which is quite a traditional planting method. It's a traditional planting method.

by native people from North America. It's not a traditional fancied method here until quite recently. So explain this this kind of combo you've got going on. So the three sisters is a way of growing that you use the corn Rydyn ni'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio And they actually grow up the corn.

And then to keep all their feet nice and cold we actually have some squash that are running underneath. So it uses the space really, really well. So each sister is one of three crops that you're growing. Yeah, yeah. And essentially what they create is they create a symbiotic ecosystem where the corn creates the climbing frame that the beans need, and then the squash creates this the shady understory. Yeah.

Thanks, Helena. If you're growing at home, hopefully that's inspired you to mix it up with some new planting and varieties and not be afraid to make a few mistakes of your own on a diverse and resilient veg plot. Seeing innovation like this also makes me just so excited for the kinds of foods that we might be able to buy and cook in years to come. Many ingredients that are commonplace today.

Would have been totally bonkers from generations before. And I just love the idea about embracing new and unfamiliar crops while also making our diets more sustainable. On top of that, as we develop and bring new varieties to market, it's important that these varieties can be grown reliably in the climate conditions of the future. and promote diverse farming systems, sustainable practices, and healthy local livelihoods. Okay, that's no small challenge.

But there are plants and crops that are just waiting for us to embrace them in more diverse and creative ways. And if we can learn from their wild relatives, perhaps it isn't too late after all for some of our favorites. Next time on Unearthed from the Royal Botanic Gardens Cue, Poppy Akotcha is meeting chefs who are shaking it up in their ethical, sustainable kitchens. She'll find out how the way we grow and eat food plays an enormous role in our future health.

And you can hear what you can do at home to play your part in helping our world have a more sustainable, secure food future. You can follow or subscribe to this podcast on your favorite app, and check out our other episodes too. I'm James Wong. Thanks for listening.