Chelsea Green to publish the ‘Seed Detective’ Adam Alexander’s new book

Chelsea Green Publishing has acquired Adam Alexander’s The Accidental Seed Heroes.

Head of editorial Muna Reyal acquired world rights from Sonia Land at Sheil Land, and the book will be published in the UK on 20th March 2025 and in North America on 4th September 2025.

“In The Accidental Seed Heroes, Adam Alexander dons his seed detective homburg to meet our 21st-century seed heroes,” the synopsis says. “From Rajasthan, to his own back garden in Wales, across Europe to the remote regions of southern Albania, and into the Rift Valley of Ethiopia – Adam reminds us that indigenous cultures and rural communities have been expertly breeding seeds for millennia.”

It adds: “At its heart, The Accidental Seed Heroes is a celebration of the locally and sustainably grown produce, whether traditional or innovative, that is the foundation of all our food cultures. Adam shows that the ability to save and adapt seeds should be a right for all, not something to be controlled by corporations trying to patent seeds for profit. That everyone who grows food, whether amateur or professional, can be a seed hero – building resilience, returning fertility to the soils and biodiversity to the land.”

The Accidental Seed Heroes follows Alexander’s first book, The Seed Detective (Chelsea Green Publishing), which was shortlisted for the Garden Media Guild’s Garden Book of the Year in 2023 and was a Radio 4 Food Programme Book of the Year.

Reyal said: “We can all be seed heroes and in this hugely entertaining, but also vitally important, book Adam explores the work of farmers, chefs, scientists and everyday gardeners who are creating a cutting-edge and positive food future for us.”

Alexander added: “I sit at the feet of traditional and indigenous farmers and a global cohort of professional, freelance and amateur growers who are custodians of genetic diversity and on the front line of a counter revolution in plant breeding and conservation.”

Land commented: “Adam’s work, alongside that of the better known gene and seed banks such as that of the Millennium Seed Bank of Kew Gardens, is highly invaluable as he writes about his personal findings from a practical, historical and futuristic viewpoint.”