Onion tears

A Kiwi researcher laments that regulations make it pointless to work on GMO’s in New Zealand. He mentions a particular sad case in point: the obstacles to testing tearless onions. There is no reference to this in the trade-journal for this type of news, the Onion ((Compensated by their coverage of the new DNA test to reveal who is bald)). What to say? Perhaps there is nothing wrong with making onions tearless, but I feel it would be a loss. Not having rational objections, I search for a metaphysical answer. Something like Carlos Drummond de Andrade’s poem about an opposite case:

Mal do Século

Como se não bastasse o mundo de tristezas
entre céu e terra,
principalmente em terra,
vem o agrónomo, descobre
o vírus da tristeza nas laranjeiras.

My translation:

Times of Sorrow

As if there wasn’t enough sadness
between heaven and earth
particularly on earth
comes the agronomist, discovers
the sadness virus in the orange trees

Ancient wheats brought up to date in Hungary

Quite by coincidence, while Luigi was digesting cereal diversity and nutrition, I was reading about an effort to bring ancient wheats up to date, also centred in Hungary. Geza Kovács of the Agricultural Research Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences has overseen a project that looked at 250 einkorn (Triticum monococcum) and 130 emmer (T. dicoccum) samples from various genebanks and screened them to see how well they performed and what kind of grain they produced. The best 20 were selected for further breeding, with a particular eye on their performance in organic systems and how well they met the needs of end users such as bakers and consumers. ((I found a brief report in the Bulletin of the Organic Research Centre, and I am trying to source a published paper.))

Two particularly promising new einkorn varieties emerged, with “acceptable” yield compared to a bread wheat and significantly higher protein content. Other varieties have undetectable levels of gluten, which might make them suitable for people with gluten allergies. Some are also high in fat-soluble anti-oxidants. Some of the new emmers also show great promise, with protein levels higher than standard bread wheat and a high level of carotenoids.

Kovács also speculates that some of the new varieties may be a good source to resurrect the production of ancient foods such as frikeh. This is made from wheat, harvested at a critical point when the seeds are plump but still green and not yet mature. The seeds are dried and then burned. Frikeh is delicious — I tried some in Aleppo once — and could be an excellent snack for health-conscious consumers, and those who just want to eat something good that preserves diversity.