- Maharashtra to set up a genebank, but definitely NOT the nation’s first.
- Meanwhile, in Kashmir…
- Let them eat cassava cake.
- Minor roots and tubers not so minor in Malawi. Cassava unavailable for comment.
- Area man shares heirloom tomatoes. Not many people hurt.
- How to make the most, sustainably, of 12 wild-harvested plant species. According to FAO.
- Indigenous peoples have been harvesting oysters sustainably for millennia.
- The wonderful Plant Humanities Initiative does recipes.
Nibbles: Oz genebanks, Turkish heirlooms, Indian heirlooms, Peruvian cryobank, Chinese cryobank, Seeds for farmers, Gamma gardens, Bees, DSI, Seville cathedral, Food & climate change
- Australian politicians promise genebank. World holds its breath.
- Meanwhile, in Turkey…
- … and India…
- …and Peru…
- …and China.
- Another way of getting seeds to farmers.
- What, even irradiated ones?
- But don’t forget the bees.
- Hopefully DIS won’t scupper all this sharing.
- Because although our foods are not set in stone…
- …we’ll need more than changes in habits to adapt agriculture to climate change.
Nibbles: American single malt, Gauguin’s coconut, World Seed Congress, Red gold, Kunming
- Will American single malt whiskey be a thing? Depends on the American barley.
- Is the fruit in Paul Gauguin’s Eü haere ia oe (Woman Holding a Fruit) a coconut? Have your say.
- Will the World Seed Congress sow a brilliant future? We shall see.
- Is the oil palm over in West Africa? Depends.
- Where are we with that post-2020 biodiversity deal? Nowhere much yet.
Turkey Red from Ukraine feeds America, and the world
As we ponder the possible effects of war on food security, a piece in Modern Farmer reminds us that Ukraine contributes to the world’s wheat crop more than just its annual harvest.
“If you’ve ever eaten a slice of bread, you can thank Ukraine. That’s not an exaggeration. The flavorful grains that transformed the North American prairies during the nineteenth century into a continental breadbasket were varieties native to Ukraine’s famed Black Earth districts of Crimea and Galicia [what is now southeastern Poland and western Ukraine].”
It has to do with the “Turkish type” hard red winter wheats that German Mennonite farmers, originally invited into the Russian empire by Catherine the Great, took with them to the US from the Crimea when things got tricky for them in the late 1800s.
Dr Tom Payne, formerly the head of the wheat genebank at CIMMYT, tells me that such varieties as Kharkov, Kherson and Kubanka were the foundation for Great Plains modern wheats, with Kharkov being the “check” against which new varieties have been compared for more than 50 years.
A few years ago, Jeremy told the story of Red Fife on his podcast. A foundational variety for Canadian wheat farming, that too can perhaps trace its ultimate origin to Ukraine.
One legend states that a load of wheat grown in Ukraine was on a ship in the Glasgow harbour. A friend of Farmer Fife dropped his hat into the red-coloured wheat, collecting a few seeds in the hatband, which he then shipped off to Farmer Fife. The wheat grew. The family cow managed to eat all the wheat heads except for one, which Mrs Fife salvaged. This was the beginning of Red Fife wheat in Canada.
Lately, some American and Canadian farmers, millers and bakers have been going back to older heritage varieties such as Turkey Red and Red Fife; and now, alas, these are making their way back home, though sadly not as one would have wished:
Janie’s Mill, which grinds grains from Janie’s Farm in central Illinois, sent customers a note about being the “direct beneficiaries of countless generations of Ukrainian wheat farmers.” In service of that direct connection, the mill is sending profits from sales of Turkey Red grains and flour to World Central Kitchen, which has been providing hot meals in the region to feed the more than two million refugees that have fled Ukraine since the attack began in February.
Brainfood: Neodomestication, Millet diets, OFSP, Fruits, Okra core, Floating gardens, Quinoa evaluation, Bean cooking, Neolithic, Lychee genome, Climate change, European maize double
- Scaling up neodomestication for climate-ready crops. Ok, but when is enough enough?
- Can Feeding a Millet-Based Diet Improve the Growth of Children? — A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Yes. So maybe make the most of the crops we already have?
- Does vitamin A rich orange-fleshed sweetpotato adoption improve household level diet diversity? Evidence from Ghana and Nigeria. Sometimes. So maybe make the most of the crops we already have?
- Global interdependence for fruit genetic resources: status and challenges in India. So many crops out there.
- DATASET: The World Vegetable Center okra (Abelmoschus esculentus) core collection as a source for flooding stress tolerance traits for breeding. This is one way of making the most of the crops we already have.
- The floating garden agricultural system of the Inle lake (Myanmar) as an example of equilibrium between food production and biodiversity maintenance. This is another way of making the most of the crops we already have.
- Phenotyping a diversity panel of quinoa using UAV-retrieved leaf area index, SPAD-based chlorophyll and a random forest approach. Oh look, here’s another, and all you need is a drone and fancy maths.
- The Phaseolus vulgaris L. Yellow Bean Collection: genetic diversity and characterization for cooking time. For this one you don’t even need a drone.
- Prehistoric Farming Settlements in Western Anatolia. What, only 5 crops?
- Two divergent haplotypes from a highly heterozygous lychee genome suggest independent domestication events for early and late-maturing cultivars. Ancient farmers knew what they were doing after all, eh?
- Expected global suitability of coffee, cashew and avocado due to climate change. Millennials could be in trouble if new crops don’t come along.
- Traditional Foods From Maize (Zea mays L.) in Europe. Maybe European millennials could eat more maize.
- Growing maize landraces in industrialized countries: from the search for seeds to the emergence of new practices and values. Nah, let’s domesticate something else instead.