- Science: Biodiversity is good even for biofuels.
- Science: Lack of annual diversity is bad for no-till maize (corn).
- Science: “Dead” bananas can still transmit banana bunchy top virus BBTV.
- Science: Potential biological control identified for coffee berry borer. (Eeeyew warning.)
- Art: Biological control (Lilioceris near impressa) of air potato (Dioscorea bulbifera). (Gorgeousness warning.)
- Science: Farmers brought farming to Britain.
- Science and art: A rose is a rose is a rose.
- Science: Black-eyed peas in Dakar gig.
Hold the phone! It’s a seriously endangered crop wild relative
It has happened, and January not even over yet. The IUCN’s Red List Species of the Day, which we are privileged to feature in a little widget over there on the right, has hit paydirt with a crop wild relative: Apium bermejoi, which Wikipedia says is “closely related to the wild form of celery”. What are the chances that it could confer resistance to some of the many pests and diseases that celery is martyr to? One expert told us: “my feeling is that it has not been used in celery breeding to any effect”. Anyone know differently?
A. bermejoi seeds are in storage, although in the wild there may be fewer than 100 individuals hanging in there on the island of Menorca.
Its habitat is often trampled by passing fishermen and hikers, or more seriously disrupted by off-road motorcyclists. In addition, Apium bermejoi must compete with a wide variety of other plant species for essential water and nutrients. Its present decline seems to be related to a series of drier summers, showing that this species is very sensitive to climate change.
That’s a lot to cope with.
How they breed Belgian Blue cattle
Swanning around the intertubes, as one does while waiting for bread to rise, I happened upon a clip from a National Geographic film called Extreme Genes. The clip gives an insight into one of the “double muscled” breeds of cattle, the Belgian Blue. You’ll note that everyone involved is at pains to point out how natural all this selection is, which is very reassuring.
Nibbles: Potatoes, beef, lamb, bull
- Want potato diversity? In the US? Tom Wagner’s your man.
- I should do more than nibble Gary’s insightful views on extremism, especially in relation to grass-fed beef and a bit of biochar. But hey, it’s Sunday.
- George Orwell contemplates smoking mutton. Jeremy asks: “Can anyone tell me more about acatie, from the Savoie?”
- The Scientist Gardener dives into bull semen. Love that second footnote!
Bread or beer? Why choose?
The Cartesian Dualists of the press, if not those of the hallowed groves of academe, are at it again. Der Spiegel, 1 late last month, and The Independent, late last week, report on Professor Patrick McGovern’s latest book, Uncorking the Past: The Quest for Wine, Beer and Other Alcoholic Beverages, almost entirely in terms of which came first, beer or bread.
All the familiar old arguments are trotted out. That bread is actually quite hard to make, while a forgotten soaked seed or rotten fruit is easy enough to swallow and packs enough punch for the brain to say, in Der Spiegel’s memorable phrase, “whatever that was, I want more of it!”. But this convenient opposition ignores things like porridge or gruel, both of which probably represent easier ways of consuming cereals than bread. 2 Most cereals don’t even make very good bread, at least not as it is understood by European journalists.
Professor McGovern, who runs the delightfully named Biomolecular Archaeology Laboratory for Cuisine, Fermented Beverages, and Health at the University of Pennsylavania’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, is actually claiming far more than that beer came first. He seems to be laying nothing less than the development of settled agriculture, and with it civilisation as we know it, at the door of drunks. According to Der Spiegel:
[A]griculture — and with it the entire Neolithic Revolution, which began about 11,000 years ago — are ultimately results of the irrepressible impulse toward drinking and intoxication.
“Available evidence suggests that our ancestors in Asia, Mexico, and Africa cultivated wheat, rice, corn, barley, and millet primarily for the purpose of producing alcoholic beverages,” McGovern explains. While they were at it, he believes, drink-loving early civilizations managed to ensure their basic survival.
He knits together all sorts of fascinating evidential threads, and at least as far as the articles go, makes a convincing enough case. But then, I remain deeply skeptical of single explanations for anything as complex as the evolution of settled agriculture. And I suspect McGovern does too. As he told The Independent:
As for his theory on how alcohol motivated man to adopt agriculture, McGovern said: “I just wanted to put it out there as a worldwide hypothesis. Then over time maybe the different pieces can be put together from across the world.”
I’m trying really trying to avoid this, but I can’t: I’ll drink to that.