My recent post about the wild pomegranate of Socotra (Punica protopunica) elicited a comment from the publisher of an interesting-sounding book called Pomegranate Roads, by Dr Gregory Levin ((Regular readers will know that this fruit has been much on my mind recently.)):
For more than forty years, Dr Gregory Levin trekked across Central Asia and the Trans-Caucasus in search of rare, endangered and mysterious wild pomegranates. His home was a remote Soviet station in the mountains that separate Turkmenistan from Iran. After the break-up of the Soviet Union, he found himself exiled from his own hidden Eden and his collection of 1,117 pomegranates. Gregory Levin has written a fascinating memoir of his life with pomegranates. He illuminates the botany, the history and myths, the astonishing range of tastes, and the health benefits – from folklore to pharmaceuticals – that make it the wonder fruit of our time.
I hope to read the book soon, and review it here, but I wonder what Dr Levin would make of news from Kashmir that the local pomegranate variety — called “Dane” — is threatened by an insect pest. Is this variety conserved ex situ? If so, I hope it is found in a genebank other than the one in Jharkhand that was reported late last year to be threatened with annihilation. We haven’t heard anything on that lately, by the way, and a quick search on Google News revealed nothing. Does anyone know what’s going on?
P.S. Stefano Padulosi of Bioversity International worked with Dr Levin on the pomegranate collection. There’s a video of him talking about it on YouTube.