Harman Jaggi

The Princeton Field Workshop is great opportunity for undergraduate students to learn ecological field skills and explore career paths! tinyurl.com/PFEW-2025

An ancient pea holds lessons for a warming Himalaya Nurtured for millennia in the Trans-Himalaya, the hardy black pea outperforms cash crops in resilience and nutrition — and could reshape how science values farmers’ knowledge and forgotten foods.

Had a great interaction with Sahana Ghosh from Nature India about our black pea research. Here's her excellent story on our paper:
www.nature.com/articles/d44...
@nature.com
@ornithoale.bsky.social
@stanforddoerr.bsky.social

The ecological promise of the Himalayan black pea Stanford researchers discovered a nearly forgotten variety of black peas from the northwest Himalayas that excels in climate resilience and nutrition.

Happy to share our research was featured in Stanford reports. @stanforddoerr.bsky.social @ornithoale.bsky.social
news.stanford.edu/stories/2025...

Excited to see our work on 🔥 in industrial forests featured in the @sfchronicle.com this morning.

Article by @kurtisalexander.bsky.social:

www.sfchronicle.com/california-w...

Check out our newest study published in Science Advances last Friday ❤️

A huge thanks to the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability for the accelerator grant that made this possible, and to the local community members who shared their knowledge, some of whom are co-authors and co-producers of this work. @stanforddoerr.bsky.social

We hope these findings can empower the farmers to revive and grow resilient traditional crops and diversify their production systems across mountain landscapes.

Our multipronged research underscores the importance of integrating traditional agricultural knowledge with ecological science to sustain agrobiodiversity, enhance climate resilience, and promote sustainable food systems.

Third, we find higher protein and micronutrient content such as iron, magnesium, and calcium in black peas compared to green peas.

Second, we provide the first whole-genome sequencing of black pea. Using spectral, hierarchical, and k-means clustering, we find black peas form distinct genetic clusters (from wild and domesticated subspecies) highlighting a complex cultural and environmental selection over thousands of years.

We examined black peas (an understudied, lesser-known crop) and barley from an ecological, genetic, nutritional and cultural lens. Our first finding is what local farmers knew all along: black peas require much less water to grow & outperform the introduced green pea in survival/reproductive traits.

Happy to share our research on traditional farming landscapes in northwest Himalaya is out in Science Advances! Thanks to my advisor Tulja & all the wonderful collaborators- Ale @ornithoale.bsky.social, Katie @kasolari.bsky.social, Akshata, Kullu, Rinchen, Lamaji. 1/7 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...