Wonder what this hillside looks like now…
Breadfruit roundup
Our friend Diane Ragone of the Breadfruit Institute has kindly reminded us that there’s been quite a lot published on her favourite fruit lately. Almost worth a Brainfood all on its own, in fact.
Beyond the Bounty: Breadfruit (Artocarpus altilis) for food security and novel foods in the 21st Century. Great potential, but “a deeper understanding of the nutritional characteristics and the development of new products and markets are needed.” Which is kinda provided, at least to some extent, by the next two papers.
Diversity of breadfruit (Artocarpus altilis, Moraceae) seasonality: A resource for year-round nutrition. “About 24 cultivars exhibited very little seasonality and produced fruit throughout the year. The rest of the cultivars could be clustered into seasonality groups with characteristic fruiting patterns.”
Nutritional and morphological diversity of breadfruit (Artocarpus, Moraceae): Identification of elite cultivars for food security. “…individual varieties … are particularly good sources of mineral and protein nutrition.”
Athena’s olive tree
“Legend … says that this olive tree can be traced back to the tree originally planted by Athena here. Every invader cut it down and every time someone saved a sprig to be planted later. The most recent replanting was done by members of the American School in 1952 who saved it bit from what the Germans destroyed in 1942.”
Nibbles: Plectranthus, Roads, Fast food, Dog food, Hybrid rice, Mapping climate change, Turf, Cassava, iPhone app, Zizania, Rice
- Livingstone potato (Plectranthus) on the menu in Burundi. Yeah but what does it taste like?
- The world’s roads mapped. About time too.
- The world’s convenience food made better. Maybe.
- Dog cooking pot from ancient China. Woof. Via.
- Hybrid rice backfires. Via.
- Mapping the impacts of climate change. Only country level though.
- Native lawns better. But are they greener?
- JSTOR does a cassava roundup despite hating tapioca.
- Biodiversity monitoring? There’s an app for that.
- Wild rice (not a wild relative of rice, mind, but sacred to the local Native Americans) vs the copper-nickel mining industry.
- Slideshow on rice (the real thing) in Vietnam.
Nuts
I’ve been kinda quiet lately due to illness last week and then going on vacation to Athens for a few days earlier this week. Here’s a taster of the holiday snaps. More later, on an agrobiodiversity theme, of course.
Oh, and happy Earth Day!