Participatory research and on-farm management of agricultural biodiversity in Europe, by Michel Pimbert, looks like an interesting read. So, in a different way, does the EU biodiversity strategy to 2020. What is not so great is that, at first sight, there doesn’t seem to be much of the former in the latter. But let me get back to you when I’ve gone through both in more detail.
Nibbles: Canids, Pea, Cacao, Scallops
- Dogs are different from wolves, different types of wolves are different from each other.
- Vavilov-Frankel Fellow on the move.
- Nacional cacao bean rediscovered in northern Peru.
- Manx Queenies deemed to be sustainable. And wipe that smile off your face.
Private cabbages go public in North Carolina
Of course the obligatory conspiracy theories have surfaced, but Monsanto’s gift of its extensive cabbage germplasm collection to North Carolina’s State University’s Plants for Human Health Institute seems genuine enough.
“Monsanto is pleased to contribute cabbage germplasm to N.C. State University’s Plants for Human Health Institute at the N.C. Research Campus,” said Consuelo Madere, Monsanto’s Global Vegetable and Asia Commercial lead. “We sell cabbage seed under our Seminis brand in several world areas,” she said, “and we are delighted that the Institute will be working at NCRC to develop cabbage varieties well suited to the local production needs in North Carolina. It’s a great example of public and private efforts coming together at the campus.”
That might suggest that Monsanto would look askance at the material getting too far beyond North Carolina, but Dr Allan Brown, the breeder with the Plants for Human Health Institute who will be managing the collection, assures me there are no strings attached with regard to availability. He has a long job ahead checking on the viability of all the accessions, and regenerating and multiplying the material as needed, but he sees no impediment to it eventually being widely available, though he cannot put a date on that.
That’s good news for cabbage breeders around the world. If I were a proper reporter I would ask Monsanto why they didn’t make the donation to the USDA’s Northeast Regional PI Station at Geneva, New York, which manages plenty of cabbages, and which would then very willingly have made the material available to NCSU, and everyone else to boot. Maybe I will anyway.
The Pahiyas festival
“Pahiyas is a Filipino term that means precious offering and predates the Spanish colonial period of the country by several centuries. This celebration was originally an animistic ritual practiced by the pre-Christian Filipinos to honor their rice god, Ampo’t Paray, and to ask for bountiful harvests in the coming year.”
Identifying the source of Bluefields’ breadfruits
Frank Lohmann asked an intriguing question in a comment on a recent post about breadfruit:
I have several breadfruit trees, which most likely go back to the trees captain Bligh brought to Jamaica, does anyone know which variety that is?
The reason Frank gave for believing his plants to date back to Capt. Bligh is “because he brought them to Bluefields were I live and planted them here.”
I asked for some photos and showed them to Diane Ragone of the Breadfruit Institute in Hawaii. She said that it is certainly plausible that the tree is from Tahiti.
Pressed for a variety name, this is what she said:
It’s so hard to tell with the Tahitian varieties. There are so many of these Polynesian triploid types with round fruit and deeply lobed leaves. Perhaps Rare, which was one of the varieties that Bligh noted in the Bounty log, but no mention in the Providence log as to what he actually brought to the Caribbean. A paper on that is on my too-long and neglected list of papers on breadfruit!
So we’ll just have to wait for a positive ID. But Frank could well be right that his breadfruits go back to the famed captain. I for one will choose to believe they do.