- At last, sustainable clarinets!
- Hummus war gets serious. All that seratonin not helping?
- “Hearts of oak are our ships, jolly tars are our men.” Simon Schama on Quercus robur. Note to BBC: learn how to write species names.
- Pop quiz: Some 20,000 tons of this seed were delivered by Aztec farmers in annual tribute to their emperor, Montezuma. Now big in the US, according to NYTimes piece. From 1984.
Nibbles: Conservation, Women, Subsidies, Bees, Microbes, Rhizobia, Genebanks, Chicken history, Nordic genebank
- Academics say conservation of biodiversity does not benefit the poor. Maybe they’re talking about the wrong kind of biodiversity?
- Innovation of the Week: Feeding Communities by Focusing on Women. I think my irony detector may be on the fritz.
- All you ever wanted to know about farm subsidies in the US. h/t Food Politics.
- The Bittersweet Dreams of Uruguay’s Beekeepers. Sad.
- State microbes! Really fun, and informative. Any better ideas?
- More microbes: The evolution of nitrogen fixation. Absolutely fascinating.
- Slideshow on genebanks in southern Africa.
- Pre-Columbian, Polynesian chickens in Chile not Polynesian and probably not pre-Columbian. Blast! Why must fun theories always run up against the brick wall of facts?
- NordGen’s annual report: crops, forests, livestock.
Deconstructing the spread of agriculture
Did agriculture move in the hands of people, or with the words of people? Or, somewhat more prosaically:
Two alternative models have been proposed to explain the spread of agriculture in Europe during the Neolithic period. The demic diffusion model postulates the spreading of farmers from the Middle East along a Southeast to Northeast axis. Conversely, the cultural diffusion model assumes transmission of agricultural techniques without substantial movements of people.
Actually not just Europe. And the jury is still out. Two recent paper both tilt towards cultural diffusion, both in Europe (which is where the above quote comes from; but not everybody agrees) and Island SE Asia. This sort of work is mainly done by anthropologists and human geneticists. Sometimes the genetics of livestock or crops are brought into play, but only rarely both at the same time. A grand synthesis of human, livestock and crop genetic data, archaeology and anthropology remains to be done…
Nibbles: Trees, More trees, Crops and trade, Pollination info, Anthocyanins
- Another day, another tree disease threatens the British landscape.
- Some Swedish trees are not doing too well either.
- Seeds of Trade. A virtual book at the NHM. Lots of info on the history of crops.
- What are the pollination needs of a particular crop? FAO will tell you if you ask nicely.
- Purple tea in Kenya. Luigi’s mother-in-law not impressed.
Ancient lentils come back to life?
Remember the story about the 4000 year old lentil? Well, the latest is that 17 seedlings are going to be planted.