Did you know these foods existed? - What in the World podcast, BBC World Service

At least 30,000 of the 350,000 known plant species on our planet are edible, according to the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization, but only 170 species of plant are cultivated for food on a large scale. Click here to subscribe to our channel 👉🏽 https://bbc.in/3VyyriM As climate change affects plant yields and disease threatens some of our most popular crops (bananas, we’re looking at you), scientists say we need to explore so-called “forgotten foods” to diversify the crops we grow. But what are they — and what are some of the opportunities and challenges of growing them at scale? BBC Climate and Science correspondent Georgina Rannard takes us on a mini field trip to the London Science Museum @ScienceMuseum to explain why food security is such an important issue - and the solutions scientists are finding to tackle this. Kew Gardens ethnobotanist Philippa Ryan, from the UK, tells us about some examples of forgotten foods. And BBC Africa business correspondent Jewel Kiriungi explains why seed sharing - a practice to help preserve crop diversity - is banned in Kenya. 00:00 Coming up 00:13 Intro 00:30 Future of Food exhibition 01:30 Human overreliance on rice, wheat and maize 02:17 The Green Revolution 02:50 Why we’ve ‘forgotten' foods 03:32 Risks of low food diversity 04:00 Bananas under threat 5:14 What is fonio? 07:10 The false banana 07:55 Forgotten foods and disease resistance 09:30 Why seed sharing is important 09:50 Kenya banning seed sharing 11:40 How to solve low food diversity 12:40 Future foods taste test 14:50 Will we eat more plants in the future? 15:46 Goodbyes Watch more episodes from What in the World here 👉🏽    • What in the World   Instagram: @bbcwhatintheworld Email: [email protected] WhatsApp: +44 330 12 33 22 6 Presenter: Hannah Gelbart Producers: Chelsea Coates and Julia Ross-Roy Video Journalist: Baldeep Chahal Editor: Verity Wilde ---------------- This is the official BBC World Service YouTube channel. If you like what we do, you can also find us here: Instagram 👉🏽   / bbcworldservice   Twitter 👉🏽   / bbcworldservice   Facebook 👉🏽   / bbcworldservice   BBC World Service website 👉🏽 https://www.bbc.co.uk/worldserviceradio Thanks for watching and subscribing! #BBCWorldService #WorldService #foodsupply #bananas #foodsecurity