Author: Luigi Guarino

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Verdura di campo needs to be identified

In the first warm days of early spring Caterina’s mother — from the generation that lived through the wars — still roams the fields in search of that wonder of wonders… le verdure di campo (wild “vegetables”).

I bet she does. Read all about it in ItalianNotebook, and you’ll be salivating within seconds, like I was.

But fight the urge to rush out and harvest the roadside verges long enough to read the comment made by Barbara Modica at 2:39 pm on May 24th:

In the spring, there is a weed which resembles a rhubarb plant, except it is smaller, has a green stalk and green leaf shaped and about the same size as rhubarb. My husband’s family (from Sicily) boiled the stems, discard the leaves, then breaded them and fried them in olive oil. They called them gardoni (or something similar to that). Are you familiar with them? They are only edible in the spring, later on turn into a tall plant. We carry on the tradition and our grandchildren love them also.

Any ideas?

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Nibbles: Prickly pear, Corridors, Nutrition, Backyard chickens, SW agriculture, Non-wood forest products, Mexican ungulates, Chinese sheep

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The glut of bugs in your gut

A long article on The Why Files discusses changing attitudes to the human gut flora:

These critters, mainly bacteria, vastly outnumber the cells in our bodies, and we are utterly dependent on them. Bacteria make vitamin K, essential for clotting blood. As they do in cows, bacteria play an essential role converting our food into usable chemicals. And bacteria form a complex barrier against invading pathogenic microbes.

The realization of which has led to an explosion of proper scientific work on probiotics 1, formerly confined to the lunatic fringe.

A springboard for the growing interest, Huffnagle 2 says, was a discovery by Jeffrey Gordon of Washington University, who found that bacteria “can talk to the epithelial cells that line the GI tract, which can turn on different genes depending on who is living nearby.”

What’s the connection to agrobiodiversity? More from the article in The Why Files:

Probiotics can be taken in supplement pills, or in many cultured products, such as yogurt, cottage cheese, tempeh and kefir. It’s not clear which mechanism is better, says Sanders 3, who consults to the dairy industry on microbiology. “Often probiotics are incorporated into the production of a food product, but we don’t really have a good sense of how important that might be. During the fermentation of milk into a dairy product, they may … produce organic acids or peptides that contribute to the health effects of a probiotic yogurt, but unfortunately there is no good research to sort out the benefits of a fermented dairy product versus a dry supplement.”

So microbial agrobiodiversity doesn’t just result in a huge range of delicious products with strong niche market potential. It’s also good for you.

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Mini-cows a hit in the recession

I just can’t resist stories about miniature livestock. Despite the fact that we’re still getting 250 hits a week from people looking for the pocket pigs we mentioned in a one-line throwaway post two years ago. Or maybe because of that. But it is a serious thing:

…miniature Herefords consume about half that of a full-sized cow yet produce 50% to 75% of the rib-eyes and fillets, according to researchers and budget-conscious farmers.

Which all reminds me of the dwarf cattle I saw on Socotra some years back. I wonder if anything is being done with them. And with what I suppose must be their relatives in the Dhofar region of southern Oman. I can’t imagine they’ll long survive the rapid development that seems to be going on in both places.

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Discussing threats to livestock diversity

A very informative contribution came in today from the moderator of the DAD-Net e-discussion on analyzing threats to animal genetic resources, listing a number of success stories:

1. Incentives have been used in several cases to conserve and even rescue breeds that were nearly extinct because of the reduction in population size due to the elimination by more productive breeds. Several examples are provided by the EuReCa (European Regional cattle Breeds) network in their breed of the month archive. The site for each breed also shows how breed societies can be effective in the management of AnGR. Notable cases include: Eastern Finncattle, Kerry cattle, Polish Red.

2. Exploration of niche markets through the branding of products from an endangered breed can reverse the trend of a particular breed.

3. Effect of the expansion of industrialised agriculture on indigenous breeds and how the breeds were driven almost to extinction.

4. How crossbreeding programmes (to increase productivity) coupled with unfavourable policies can be a threat to indigenous AnGR. See story on the Vechur cattle breed in India and how it was rescued from extinction.