A traditional narcotic shrub is taking over Yemeni agriculture.
Exterminating the American bison
Advanced European tanning technology did for the buffalo. Not all the men with guns.
Ancient Irish beer recreated
Archaeologists interpret fulacht fiadh, brew ancient Irish beer, then go for curry.
A second helping of rice
More today to satisfy your hunger for rice information, hot on the heels of the recent paper trying to explain the pattern of genetic variation across and within two subspecies of cultivated rice, discussed by Jeremy a couple of days ago.
First there’s a paper ((Global Dissemination of a Single Mutation Conferring White Pericarp in Rice. Sweeney MT, Thomson MJ, Cho YG, Park YJ, Williamson SH, et al. PLoS Genetics Vol. 3, No. 8.)) looking at how the red pericarp of wild rice became the white pericarp of cultivated rice. The answer is that a mutation arose in the japonica subspecies, crossed to the indica and became fixed in both under very strong selection pressure by ancient rice farmers. They must have really liked those funny mutant white grains when they first noticed them! Oh to have been a fly on the wall — or a brown plant hopper on the rice stalk — when the white pericarp mutation was first noticed in some ancient paddy…
Then comes news that the three CGIAR centres with an interest in rice — IRRI, WARDA and CIAT — are to boost their collaboration to solve the pressing production problems of Africa. There’s talk of forming a consortium. More flags being prepared.
Food is good
There’s an implicit pro-agricultural biodiversity message in a recent statement by the American Dietetic Association. These seem to be coming think and fast at the moment, by the way: we nibbled an earlier one a few weeks ago. The latest one, which I heard about — belatedly — via the Center for Consumer Freedom, takes a swipe at “pseudo-experts” that either demonize or anoint individual food items in their bully campaigns:
[N]o single food or type of food ensures good health, just as no single food or type of food is necessarily detrimental to health.
That’s why it is always sad when a food crop leaves the agricultural repertoire, and why it is important to find out why it did so.