Cooking

May 5, 2008January 20, 2023

Adding value to Peruvian agricultural biodiversity

I hadn’t known about lucuma yogurt (or yoghurt) before seeing this in Lima. Wikipedia says it’s a popular ice cream flavour. I haven’t tried that, but the yogurt is great.

And speaking of added-value products of agrobiodiversity, how about this: potato chips (or crisps) from a whole range of different weird Peruvian high-altitude varieties:

May 5, 2008

Round and round the beer flows

After four days away from the intertubes, I’m astonished to be sent from a beer blog in Philadelphia, via a very local paper in that town, to a brew roundup in Burkina Faso, where sorghum is the starting material of choice. It’s a good, colourful write-up that makes it clear how important beer is in the everyday life of Zogore. And Philly. And yes, I know I need to get over it, but the sheer range of stuff out there continues to delight.

May 5, 2008May 5, 2008

Nibbles: Camels, kvas, fruits, watermelon, bees, soil microbes

Camels make a comeback in Rajasthan.
Globalization comes to Russian kvas production.
Mangosteen finally allowed into US. NY Times video about exotic fruits. Via.
While the rest of the world frets about high food prices, US declares National Watermelon Month.
USDA tries to keep abreast of honeybee Colony Collapse Disorder.
Teaching about soil microbial agrobiodiversity.

May 5, 2008May 5, 2008

To all our Mexican readers

!Feliz Cinco de Mayo! You’ll be pleased to hear the California Avocado Commission is thinking of you too.

April 30, 2008May 1, 2008

Nibbles: Trees, AGRA, pig meat, culinodiversity, fund raising, seed, data

Let them eat leaves: farmers to plant trees in Kenya.
For the archives: Rockefeller Foundation’s original blueprint for A Green Revolution for Africa (PDF).
Keeping it real, computers and genetics monitor Iberian ham.
Eat diversity to conserve it.
Three-headed coconut tree for sale. To you, one million bucks.
Video on FAO seed project in Afghanistan. I just hope somebody’s taking care of the landraces.
Scientists exhorted to geo-reference. IRRI GIS staff unavailable for comment.

Fresh Nibbles

What has agrobiodiversity ever done for us? Kent Nnadozie of the Plant Treaty lays it out.
Michael Frei of the HealthyDiets4Africa project doesn’t need it laid out.
Neither do the people who awarded a prize to Charlotte Allender of the UK Vegetable Genebank.
What has the US National Plant Germplasm System ever done for anyone? The Guardian, the NY Times and NPR News lay it out. I guess someone in D.C. needs it laid out, but will it make any difference?
Everyone: Potatoes in Florida! Breeders: No problem. NPGS: You called?
Here’s The Guardian again, but this time thinking it is making the case for not putting seeds in the fridge, whereas in fact it’s making the case for the complementarity of ex situ and on-farm conservation.
Speaking of on-farm conservation, here’s a couple of pieces on community seed banks in Guatemala.
Speaking of on-farm conservation, here’s the heart-warming story of Welsh organic farmer Gerald Miles.
Meanwhile, the World Vegetable Centre opens a new genebank.
And Türkiye hosts an international, no less, olive genebank.
And genebanks can be so beautiful, like works of art. Former Tate Modern director Vicente Todolí lays out his citrus samples. I wonder what he could do with olives.
Botanic gardens are beautiful and often act a little bit like crop genebanks. Here’s an example from Portugal I stumbled onto recently, I forget how.
You know what I’d like to see? An international pepper genebank, that’s what. No, not the kind that might be in those Guatemalan community seedbanks or the WorldVeg genebank. This sort of pepper. Piper pepper.
I bet the ancient Egyptians had pepper. Egyptian archaeologist Mennat-Allah El Dorry lays out what else they had.
Maybe you could lay out world history using pepper. You can definitely do so using cacao and chocolate.
No, not using ancient DNA, but actually…

Published on April 4, 2025