- Pumpkin beer is an abomination, early, late or right on time.
- The best thing about India’s National Food Security Act is that it now includes millets and other “coarse” grains, which gets barely a mention in How secure is India’s National Food Security Act?.
- Calling BS on the SDGs.
- If they’re planting it, can it be truly “wild” rice? Cultivation vs domestication: discuss.
- AoB blog investigates a popular but little-known grape variety.
- What is it about crop wild relatives all of a sudden. Now it’s sunflowers.
`Wild’ rice’: An annual, large-seeded grass (Zizania) growing in and harvested from natural `monocultures’ now being cultivated (seeded).
Seems an obvious pathway to domestication. The big change will not be the cultivation, but the method of harvesting. Beating into canoes encourages a non-shattering `cultivar’ (seeding is from what is left in the lake after harvest); cutting seed heads encourages a shattering cultivar (seeding is from the seed that falls and is lost on the ground/under water during harvest). Be interesting to monitor over time.