Luigi Guarino

April 10, 2013April 10, 2013

The grapevines of Pompeii

Sign explaining the story behind a vineyard planted in the ruins of Pompeii — Sign explaining the story behind one of several vineyards planted among the ruins of Pompeii

Although I knew that grapevines were cultivated in Roman times in and around Pompeii, I had no idea, until I visited the place for the first time in decades last week, that they’re there again, and in force. Various varieties apparently dating back to the time of the eruption that destroyed the city in AD 79 were planted in the late 1990s, more or less where they were originally grown.

According to Mastroberardino, wine played a central role in the lives of the Vesuvian people. Archaeological excavations, botanical studies, and the discovery of casts of vine roots and their support stakes have confirmed that vines were grown within ancient Pompeii’s city walls, in the gardens and orchards which beautified villas, and especially in the quarters located on the outskirts of the city, near the amphitheatre.

And they seem to be doing very well, though you perhaps wouldn’t know it from my photos taken in early April. Fortunately, the internet can help with that.

April 9, 2013

Food composition training materials planned

Are you working in a university which includes or is intending to include a course on food composition in its curriculum? well, if so, you might be interested in this recent announcement from INFOODS coordinator Ruth Charrondiere on FAO’s nutrition listserv.

I am pleased to announce that FAO/INFOODS is developing an e-learning course on food composition which is intended mainly for universities to easily incorporate food composition into their curricula. It will also be useful for self-learners and food composition courses. The e-learning course will supplement the FAO/INFOODS Food Composition Study Guide and its accompanying 12 PowerPoint Presentations (see http://www.fao.org/infoods/infoods/training/en/). It will be available in English. You will be able to download it free-of-charge from the INFOODS website and receive it on CD. We intend to launch it at the 10th IFDC in Granada.

So now you have no excuse for not documenting food composition data at the crop variety level.

April 8, 2013April 8, 2013

Brainfood: Moroccan almonds, MAS in potato, Mexican maize market, History of agronomy, Malian querns, Hani terraces, Conservation modelling, Wild Cucumis, Pathogens and CC

Moroccan almond is a distinct gene pool as revealed by SSR. Ok, now what?
Molecular markers for late blight resistance breeding of potato: an update. Ok, now what?
Reconstructing the Maize Market in Rural Mexico. Not so free after all.
Why agronomy in the developing world has become contentious. Neoliberalism, participation and environmentalism. The answer? Political agronomy.
Millet and sauce: The uses and functions of querns among the Minyanka (Mali). Form depends on more than just function.
Landscape pattern and sustainability of a 1300-year-old agricultural landscape in subtropical mountain areas, Southwestern China. If it ain’t broke, why fix it?
Mathematical optimization ideas for biodiversity conservation. Fancy math works sometimes but not always. Wonder if it would work on the Hani terraces above. Or on Mexican maize for that matter.
Mitochondrial genome is paternally inherited in Cucumis allotetraploid (C. × hytivus) derived by interspecific hybridization. Not the chlororoplast genome though. Weird. But now what?
Migrate or evolve: options for plant pathogens under climate change. Or, indeed, both. But we need better models, and a better handle on what human interventions can do. Interestingly, pathogen diversity may well increase in some places.

April 8, 2013April 8, 2013

Nibbles: Botanic gardens & forest foods, Militants against IRRI, Modern ancient farm, Conservation software, Urban mowing sheep, Agro-ecology, Beans, Value of genebanks, Seed savers, Video

Botanic gardens get into the restoration business. So that people can again eat nutritious forest foods. No, really, even the BBC says so.
Militant Filipino NGOs target IRRI. Not for the first time. And probably not the last.
Anyone planning to go to the Beltain at Butser Ancient Farm? Only a month to go…
You are probably already using at least one of these.
Paris looking to go all sheepish.
I don’t know about you, but I immediately turn off when somebody says that X is the only answer to Y. Even when the X is agro-ecology.
Même s’ils le disent en français.
Chinese “board beans” are actually lablab shock.
You going to spend an evening at The Genome Analysis Centre discussing the value of genebanks? Tell us about it!
Dutch seed savers looking to get organized.
New York times goes overboard for Digital Green participatory video.

April 5, 2013April 4, 2013

Way too much of a mediocre thing

This post may just be too meta for most busy readers, but I just had to get the sequence right in my head, so apologies, and feel free to go and make a cup of coffee or watch the Svalbard video again instead of reading any further.

It all started with a Science paper entitled “Wild Pollinators Enhance Fruit Set of Crops Regardless of Honey Bee Abundance.” It popped up in our RSS readers here in late February, if memory serves, and we duly included it in a Brainfood in early March, together with a link to an NPR story dated 1 March and a facetious comment to the effect that it is difficult to add anything to the title. NPR did try its best, though, linking to another paper on pollinators published in Science at the same time, for example.

And there it rested, and arguably should have stayed. But then, on 27 March, SciDevNet did a story on that first Science paper, pretty much out of the blue, even highlighting the fact that it was a month old. In my opinion, it really didn’t add much to the NPR story, though it did link to another, earlier and much narrower, study by the paper’s lead author, the wonderfully named Lucas Garibaldi.

Which brings us to Mongabay. Normally totally on the ball, they waited until 3 April to publish their take on Garibaldi’s original Science paper. And really, to be honest, again they added very little to what NPR had said. Or indeed to the paper’s title, for that matter.

There’s no doubt in my mind that Garibaldi et al.’s paper is interesting and deserved a write-up. But three largely overlapping write-ups over the course of a month after publication? Well, you tell me. I know what I think.