Luigi Guarino

March 23, 2009March 23, 2009

Featured: Wheat domestication

J. Giles Waines clarifies wheat domestication:

“World wide wheat species” do not descend from einkorn wheat Triticum monococcum (AmAm), first cultivated close by Gobekli. The source of the AuAu genome in BBAuAu tetraploid and BBAuAuDD hexaploid wheats is a wild diploid species, Triticum urartu, that was never cultivated as far as we know, nor domesticated. It does grow in the vicinity of Urfa, Turkey, and is more drought tolerant than einkorn. The source of the BB genome that provided the egg of the initial hybrid, and hence the extra genes for mitochondria and chloroplasts is thought to be an ancestor of present day Aegilops speltoides, which also grows near Urfa and Harran.

March 23, 2009March 23, 2009

Plant Conservation Day reminder

Actually, I didn’t even know there was a Plant Conservation Day. BCGI put me on to it. And it does seem to be a celebration very much focused on botanic gardens. But why shouldn’t genebanks and heirloom gardeners and others interested in agrobiodiversity get in on the act too? We’ve got a couple of months to think up things to do…

March 23, 2009June 28, 2009

Neat rum

There’s only one rum that can put Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée (AOC) on its label, apparently. It is Martinique’s Rhum Agricole, and it has a fascinating history. Via.

March 22, 2009March 23, 2009

Department of Silver Linings, part 387

Yes, sure, climate change will cause sea level rise, which is going to be bad for places like Bangladesh and its rice and shrimp farmers, who will all end up in Dhaka. But. Yep, there might actually be a but. The same climate change is also causing increased flows of water — and, crucially, suspended sediment — from Himalayan glaciers. All you have to do is damn up the water and the silt will build up the land, counteracting the rise in sea level. With any luck, the net result will be stasis. And farmers can keep farming. Until the glaciers run out, that is.

March 22, 2009February 13, 2010

Browsing Princeton’s image library

A short note in Global Voices sent me to the Princeton Digital Library of Islamic Manuscripts in search of anything vaguely botanical or agricultural. I found a treatise on botany with charming watercolours of many different plants, some cultivated. Perhaps someone out there who can read classical Arabic can tell us the gist.

Roaming a little further around the Princeton Digital Collections I also came across the Western Americana Photographs Collection, which has some really fascinating stuff. I had no idea that Indians stored acorns in specially constructed caches, for example. But it seems to have been a common practice in the Yosemite Valley.