Luigi dug up this great article — Devil’s Dung: The World’s Smelliest Spice — which reveals more about asafoetida than you could possibly ever have wanted to know. Lord but it is strange stuff to cook with, and yet I do like what it does for a dish. But I digress. Buried in a sidebar near the bottom of the page is a claim, complete with coy question mark, that silphium, most prized spice of ancient Rome, might be alive and well. The article recounts the history of silphium, and how it was believed to have gone extinct by the 1st century CE, so I won’t repeat that here. It also mentions the possibility that Cachrys ferulacea and ancient silphium are one and the same. ((GBIF doesn’t yet know about the record from Cyrenia.)) Personally, I have no idea, and I’m not even sure I know how one would know, but I’m intrigued. Thanks Luigi.
Rainbow sweetcorn not so sweet
Patrick at Bifurcated Carrots reports on his experiment this year growing Painted Hills sweetcorn. to summarise, the plants weren’t very robust, the yield was poor, and the kernels weren’t all that sweet. (Perhaps he should try Red Miracle next year.) On the plus side:
Wow! Multi-colored sweet corn! Can you believe it? A variation of the famous Painted Mountain corn! Perfectly edible. Truly a visual delight, if not a tasty one.
Pat admits that it needs more work to thrive under his conditions, and that he’s not about to take that on, which is fair enough. Maybe someone else will rise to the challenge.
Nibbles: Web 2.0 edition
- Digital soil maps. Luscious. Via.
- Farmers encouraged to tweet. Yeah, right, they have time for that.
- Urban farming: the new dot com? Before the bubble, or after?
Agricultural biodiversity and universities
Our friends and colleagues at Bioversity International have just published a 4-page briefing on Learning Agrobiodiversity: The importance of agricultural biodiversity and the role of universities. ((You should be able to download a PDF from that link; if not, yell, and we’ll send you one.)) It gives an admirable summary of what agricultural biodiversity is, what it is good for, and what is happening to it. The main thrust, though, is to present the results of surveys of how agrobiodiversity features in university curricula.
Bottom line: not so well.
If you know of any courses that the authors may have missed, we’ll be happy to pass on any information. And if you’re moved to organize a course and are looking for guest lecturers, we can probably help there too.
Featured: Organic GMOs
Anastasia has a dream:
I’d like to see some transgenic plants that simply resist fungal infection, but that’s not organic – even though it would reduce or eliminate the need for chemical sprays.