- Conserving heirloom rice in the Philippines.
- A seed production company run by farmers.
- Tapping toddy. With audio goodness.
- Lots of goodness in Jeremy’s latest newsletter.
- Australia gets serious about coconut conservation in the Pacific and beyond.
- Australia’s own genebanks are very serious. Oh yes indeedy.
- Will sweet potatoes get young people into farming in Kenya? If my nephews are anything to go by, the answer, alas, is no.
- Maybe they should try mungbeans.
- Or NERICA.
- The Bing cherry didn’t help Ah Bing much though.
- Whatever the crop, it’s total factor productivity that you have to watch for.
- And then don’t forget to include whatever intervention you come up with in subject-wide evidence synthesis.
- Prize for best title of the week: “Nordic cooperation on genetic resources – what’s the point?” Nice video.
Nibbles: Garlic history, Collecting, GMO course, Rice genebank, Mango diversity, Chilli diversity, Virtual plant breeding, Navel orange, LA tree, Cotton sustainability, Saudi agritourism
- Trying to promote a “poor person’s crop”? Try the garlic trick, ennobling.
- A Reference Manual for Expedition Plant Collectors, courtesy of the The Arnold Arboretum.
- Cornell runs a MOOC on GMOs. How about one on genebanks, eh?
- Maharashtra could maybe use it.
- You can never have too many mangoes.
- Or dried chillies.
- Next generation plant breeding.
- Riverside protects its famous citrus tree.
- But not all famous California trees are so lucky.
- Making cotton sustainable. Hard row to hoe.
- Saudi farm tourism. Even harder.
Lost rice found, again
First there was Carolina Gold. Now there is “upland red bearded” or “Moruga Hill” rice.
Mr. Dennis had heard about hill rice…through the culinary organization Slow Food USA and the Carolina Gold Rice Foundation, the group that brought back Carolina Gold in the early 2000s. He’d also heard stories about it from elderly cooks in his community. Like everyone else, he thought the hill rice of the African diaspora was lost forever.
But then, on a rainy morning in the Trinidad hills in December 2016, he walked past coconut trees and towering okra plants to the edge of a field with ripe stalks of rice, each grain covered in a reddish husk and sprouting spiky tufts.
“Here I am looking at this rice and I said: ‘Wow. Wait a minute. This is that rice that’s missing,’” he said.
It is hard to overstate how shocked the people who study rice were to learn that the long-lost American hill rice was alive and growing in the Caribbean. Horticulturists at the Smithsonian Institution want to grow it, rice geneticists at New York University are testing it and the United States Department of Agriculture is reviewing it. If all goes well, it may become a commercial crop in America, and a menu staple as diners develop a deeper appreciation for African-American food.
And no, they couldn’t have found it in genebanks. 1 This is what Genesys knows from the region. Trinidad is shown by the yellow marker, rice accessions in red. No rice accessions in Genesys from anywhere near Trinidad, alas.
Someone should really have a systematic look at all those red dots, though.
Nibbles: MGIS, DOIs, Lost apples found, Row 7 Seeds, EBN, “Influential” seed people.
- Banana people release new banana germplasm database, featuring DOIs.
- Video explaining what DOIs are and why they’re cool.
- Five apple varieties to get DOIs before it’s too late? Probably not.
- “A seed company built by chefs and breeders striving to make ingredients taste better before they ever hit a plate.” Whatever next.
- Occupy the food system.
- Extension works. In a big way. With agronomy anyway. Think what it could do with seeds…
Nibbles: Wild wheat & rice genomes, Lost American crops, Bread Lab, Tea symposium, Burping cows, Australian botanist, Ecuadorian landrace pics, Red listing, Fermentation PhD, Cheese rind microbes, HRH reception
- Goat grass genome to the rescue.
- No, some other weedy grass genomes to the rescue!
- Weeds could actually be lost crops.
- Clif Bar endows Bread Lab.
- Symposium on the future of tea. Mother-in-law alerted.
- You’ll need milk for that tea: breeding cattle for more production and less burping.
- Aunty Fran Bodkin: Australian botany hero.
- Field Museum field guide to Ecuadorian landraces. Of all things.
- Learn about red-listing.
- Study the microbial communities of cabbage leaves.
- Cheese rind has complex microbial communities too.
- So, anyways, this was fun.