- The 2nd World Seed Conference is coming up soon.
- Orange bananas make it big in the Solomon Islands. Thanks, Lois.
- DIVA-GIS website gets a makeover. Watch out for the blog.
- Global protected areas map mashed up.
- Dorian Fuller blogs lentil and bean domestication.
- Bookforum.com does food.
- While people discuss the pros and cons of assisted migration, one group has actually gone out and done it.
Thank you, Ames!
Just back from Heartland and, before the jetlag overpowers me, I really want to thank everyone at the North Central Regional Plant Introduction Station (NC7) in Ames, Iowa for their incredible hospitality over the past week. I know this will get to them because a couple of the people working at the station told me they visit us occasionally. Grateful for that too!
The ARS facility at Ames is the oldest of the US plant introduction stations. It’s main crop is maize, of which it has a collection of about 20,000 accessions from all over the world.
But there are also some 30,000 accessions of a bunch of other crops and wild species.
Many of the crops require careful management of pollinators during regeneration and multiplication. Fortunately, there hasn’t been any colony collapse disorder among the beehives used and maintained on the station.
Like many of the active genebanks of the USDA National Plant Germplasm System, the one at Ames benefits from an almost symbiotic relationship with nearby Iowa State University, with some staff also having university duties and many students gaining hands-on experience in the genebank.
Also nearby is a fascinating prairie remnant, Doolittle Prairie, which houses about a dozen crop wild relatives. I’ll say a bit more about that in due course, but here’s what the place looks like at sunset.
Thanks again to everyone at NC7!
Pssst! Wanna pollinate pumpkins?
I was cleaning out a mailbox the other day, and came across a message from Karl Haro von Mogel, who is quite well known around these parts. He was advising me that his new pollination video — on Cucurbits — had just been uploaded to YouTube. And I forgot to write about it. Apologies to Karl, but I’ll make it up in a minute.
The video is clearly aimed at the more industrial end of the spectrum. Bringing parent plants into a greenhouse was never an option for me. On the other hand, wandering through the pumpkin patch soon after dawn to gather ripe male flowers that had not quite opened was one of the great treats of saving my own seeds. And Karl deals with more than just controlled pollination. The first 3 1/2 minutes gives a good overview of cucurbit diversity, centres of origin and wild relatives. And near the end he reveals the secrets of the seedless watermelon. All in all, well worth 10 minutes of your life, even if you plan never to pollinate a pumpkin.
In his email Karl mentioned that he had entered the video for a competition at Chlorofilms. It was one of 17 2nd prize winners. So were some of his other films, including this one on pepper breeding.
Maybe if we could rustle up “at least $8000” in prize money we’d get some entries to our own competitions. Or maybe we should just enter the next Chlorofilms competition, if and when it happens.
Rainbow sweetcorn not so sweet
Patrick at Bifurcated Carrots reports on his experiment this year growing Painted Hills sweetcorn. to summarise, the plants weren’t very robust, the yield was poor, and the kernels weren’t all that sweet. (Perhaps he should try Red Miracle next year.) On the plus side:
Wow! Multi-colored sweet corn! Can you believe it? A variation of the famous Painted Mountain corn! Perfectly edible. Truly a visual delight, if not a tasty one.
Pat admits that it needs more work to thrive under his conditions, and that he’s not about to take that on, which is fair enough. Maybe someone else will rise to the challenge.
Nibbles: Biofuels, Nuts, Homegardens, Urban Ag, Fruit
- Maized and confused. The Economist looks at ethanol. Jeremy says: great headline.
- Would Cassava be any better? The post doesn’t even consider the question.
- Is it nuts to grow almonds in California and ship them to Vietnam for processing and packaging?
- This project aims to better understand the levels of agrobiodiversity found in homegardens. Yes, but in the UK?
- [A] gold mine of useful resources for city farmers.
- … a visionary pomologist, a fruit scientist, a species of practical rapturist … Wow!