Cheshire is a veritable hotbed of gooseberry growing.
High Plains Drifting
Wheat being nudged and prodded into perenniality, and local perennials the other way ((That’s the Land Institute stuff we’ve blogged about before.)); cows managed like bison, and bison managed like cows (including by media moguls turned restauranteurs); reenactments of Custer’s Last Stand, and Indian retirees going home to the reservation; farmers paid to retire some of their acres so grasslands can make a comeback, and high-tech plants turning corn into diapers. There sure is some funny stuff going on in the Great Plains, that sixth of the continental US between the foothills of the Rockies and the 98th (or possibly the 100th) parallel. Read all about it in National Geographic’s Change of Heartland. The feature is from a couple of years ago, but still well worth checking out, if only for the photos. And thanks to Kem and her friend for pointing it out to me.
A peach of a result for diversity and nutrition
Nobody eats a peach because they fancy a shot of carotenoids. Or do they? If so, they’d be better off choosing a yellow-fleshed variety. Scientists at Texas A&M University have examined the nutrients in 22 peach and 53 plum varieties and — Lo! — there are significant differences among them. ((Vizzotto, M., Cisneros-Zevallos, L., Byrne, D.H., Ramming, D.W. and Okie, W.R. 2006. TOTAL PHENOLIC, CAROTENOID, AND ANTHOCYANIN CONTENT AND ANTIOXIDANT ACTIVITY OF PEACH AND PLUM GENOTYPES. Acta Hort. (ISHS) 713:453-456.))
The differences in the genotype’s specific antioxidant capacity indicated that the phenolic profiles in the genotypes differ significantly. In general, the wide range of phytochemical content and antioxidant activity (AOA) found indicate that the genetic variability present can be used to develop cultivars with enhanced health benefits.
Meantime, if you can’t wait for new varieties, just pick red fleshed peaches for antioxidant activity and yellow ones for a vitamin A boost. Seriously, this is another little package of data on varietal differences, and as such we welcome it.
Hat tip: Seeds Aside.
Melaku Worede says Africa must protect plant genetic resources
“I get very worried when new technologies are developed and oriented towards exploiting the African farmers. It’s wrong for big agro-multinationals to force African farmers to use new seed varieties which will disempower them and lead to dependency when local varieties suitable to local conditions can be enhanced.
“I get very concerned when European plant genetic researchers use African farmers as guinea pigs. What they cannot do in Europe they do it here in Africa,” said Dr. Melaku, renowned for his pioneering work in plant genetic research and his role in restoring Ethiopia’s food security and plant resources.
This is from a long interview with Melaku Worede in Black Star News. I wonder how accurate the interview is. Doesn’t sound much like the champion of plant genetic resources of old.
Free the grape!
I blogged a few weeks back about the shift in the approach being taken in Europe to protect traditional farmers and producers — and the agrobiodiversity which underpins their livelihoods — in the face of globalization. Rather that erecting subsidies and tariffs to compete on price, the idea is to move upmarket and sell expensive niche products to rich foreigners. Of course, that requires a quality control and labelling system, such as appellations of origin (aka geographical indications).
Well, there’s a downside to such systems. I was idly going through my feed reader today and I ran across an old post on The Fruit Blog (a great blog which unfortunately seems to have gone dormant of late) which pointed to a 2004 article in the International Herald Tribune about how legislation is being used in Europe to basically outlaw some old American grapevine varieties:
The story has been all but forgotten in France today except among a handful of wine experts and a gaggle of bureaucrats who enforce the law. The French government banned wine made from American grape varieties on the grounds that it tasted like raspberries and was thus offensive to the palate. The European Commission adopted the French rule in 1979, making it illegal to grow these varieties anywhere in the European Union.
The percentage of outlawed American grape varieties is relatively small in France. But the offending vines are also sprinkled widely throughout several East and Central European countries that have recently joined or will soon join the European Union.
“You can’t tell the Hungarians, Bulgarians and Romanians to uproot their vines,” says Pierre Galet, perhaps the world’s leading expert on grape varieties. He believes the ban on American varieties is anachronistic.
Shades of what Jeremy has called Europe’s draconian seed laws. The US, in contrast, is not shy about mixing up the American and European grapevine genepools (I have blogged about this before: funny how much I write about wine).
As I say, the IHT article is a few years old, and things may have changed. Something is afoot in the EU with regards to wine legislation, but I wasn’t able to find any more recent analysis of the specific issue of the old American varieties. If you know the latest Brussels scoop on this, let us know.