Category: Commodity

Posted on

Unintended consequences of cacao breeding

I’ll be in Ecuador later this week, but alas nowhere near “the upriver area of the Guayas River Basin in the lowlands of southwestern Ecuador”. If I were, you know that I would be investigating arriba chocolate and beans with all the assets at my disposal. Instead I’m relying on a post at a very interesting artisanal chocolate blog, Destination Ecuador. 1

The problem seems to be that the Nacional bean — source of arriba chocolate — is susceptible to witches broom, and is being replaced by a variety called CCN-51, and “while a very good quality chocolate can be made from CCN-51, it requires different fermentation and post-harvest treatment from Nacional beans”. It also tastes different. Currently, however, there’s absolutely no incentive for growers or buyers to separate CCN-51 from Nacional. Arriba carries a price premium as chocolate, but the beans don’t, and as a result one could pay the premium for non-arriba chocolate. In other words, a rip-off.

The post is very informative about the forces that act on cacao biodiversity and marketing — and will make me look more carefully at any chocolate I do chance upon.

Posted on

Many routes to stayfresh cassava

Luigi wondered whether there was a connection between my recent report of a cassava that did not show post-harvest physiological degradation (PPD, or rotting for the rest of us) and his own post on the same subject in March of this year. So we asked the CIAT blogger.

So what’s the story? Did the high carotene trait come from M. walkerae? Or some other place? It would be great if you could tie these loose ends up for us.

And he did, by asking the CIAT researcher.

There is a connection as Luigi suggests. In the article we have just submitted there are four different sources of tolerance to PPD:

1) High carotenes

2) Induced mutations

3) Tolerance from a wild relative (Manihot walkerae)

4) Waxy starch genotypes.

The tolerance from high carotene clones is not coming from M. walkerae. It is an entirely different source and an entirely new chemical basis for the tolerance as well. As it turns out the tolerance from M. walkerae (which is real and is there) is not as good as the one we have seen in yellow rooted cassava.

Thanks to Neil, and to Hernán, and to Luigi’s elephantine memory. We’ll be on the lookout for that paper.

Posted on

Vegetables in Africa, traditional and otherwise

The FARA Secretariat blog linked to a couple of items which are sort of related, if you look hard enough. One is about Prof. Mary Abukutsa-Onyango’s work studying (in particular the nutritional properties) and promoting traditional leafy greens in Kenya, which has just won her a fellowships from African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD). You can read or listen to a podcast about it. The other piece is about the African Drylands Commodity Atlas. The connection is that there is actually a section on vegetables in the atlas, along with coffee, cotton, sugar, timber, livestock products etc. Alas, it’s things like cabbages, tomatoes and onions, destined for Europe.

In the rush to export to Europe, African domestic and regional vegetable markets have often been overlooked. Local, district and national markets provide the first outlet and are the primary clients for increased vegetable production.

Still a lot of promotion to be done on those traditional greens, despite the potential for intra-regional trade. Come to think of it, a third of yesterday’s FARA blog posts may also be relevant to African indigenous vegetables. This year’s Economic Report on Africa is focused on “Developing African Agriculture through Regional Value Chains.” Can we hope for a joined-up analysis of all this from FARA?

Posted on

Nibbles: Cacao, Soil mapping, Rice terraces, Maize, Cereus