Granos, a new Slow Food project

What is GranOS for?

The objective of GranOS is to describe and protect the genetic, morphological, and physiological characteristics of conservation plant varieties, along with their known food and non-food uses.

In this respect it resembles the aims of the CGIAR network, but with one important difference: the varieties are conserved “in vivo” and not “ex-situ” or even “in vitro”. By “ex-situ” conservation we mean conservation outside the exact place of origin in centers of the above network, with periodical sowing of seed material to prevent loss of terminability. With the GranOS project, seeds remain “in situ”, in farms, houses and fields, as well as in existing germplasm banks and collections of seed saver associations, who in recent decades have done fundamentally important, invaluable work. In addition to the other information about a seed which will be placed online, GranOS will also indicate where it can be obtained and who uses it to produce products based on it. In this way GranOS will not only be an instrument for conservation and cataloging, but also an instrument for promoting food products based on the seeds.