- Making Heritage: The Case of Black Beluga Agriculture on the Northern Great Plains. That would be Black Beluga lentils. Which seems a weird subject for feminist ethnography, generative criticism and reflexivity, but I’m game if you are.
- Genetic and phenotypic diversity of natural American oil palm (Elaeis oleifera (H.B.K.) Cortés) accessions. Four geographical clusters, and a core collection.
- Complementarity of native and introduced tree species: exploring timber supply on the east coast of Madagascar. Farmers on the edge of a protected area need a diverse mix of tree species to grow.
- Farmer participation in selection within segregating populations of cowpea in Volta Region, Ghana. From 6 F3 populations with parents from Botswana, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, and the USA to 24 lines which farmers liked.
- Apple juices from ancient Italian cultivars: a study on mature endothelial cells model. Old apple cultivars are good for you. Or at least for human umbilical vascular endothelial cells.
- Intellectual property rights, benefit-sharing and development of “improved traditional medicines”: A new approach. Ahem, what were those old apples again?
- Landscape genetics, adaptive diversity and population structure in Phaseolus vulgaris. Domestication sites (still only 2) pinpointed in the landscape.
- Changes in Climate, Crops, and Tradition: Cajete Maize and the Rainfed Farming Systems of Oaxaca, Mexico. Life is hard, and getting harder.
“American oil palm Elaeis oleifera”: this is a wild species from Central and South America now used for making interspecific hybrids with the African Oil Palm E. guineensis, a pan-Tropical plantation crop of vast importance as a source of vegetable oil. This raises the interesting question on how to define native/introduced crops.
The 15 co-authors of the recent Khoury et al. report to the ITPGRFA as Research Study 8 (Supplementary Table 8) consider `Palm Oil’ as produced from a species native to Colombia. Is this a simple (multi-authored) mistake? Or perhaps we have a new way of defining `native’ where anything from another continent that is crossed into a major crop throws the question of where the crop is native to open to question? It the second is so, then it needs explaining and defending. To me African Oil Palm, the source of palm oil, is native to West Africa, certainly not Colombia.
As the main reason for growing plantation crops away from their Centres of Origin/Diversity is to escape co-evolved pests and diseases, the breeding of E. oleifera into E. guineensis palms to be grown in plantations in Colombia (in contact with wild species) could be a long-term danger.
I remember CATIE in Costa Rica helping collectors from Malaysia sourcing E. oleifera for their breeding work on African Oil Palm – must have been over 40 years ago.