- Spinifex fibres for ultra-thin condoms, with indigenous approval.
- Piper borbonense getting its 15 minutes.
- Cook Islands shares taros with Samoa. Fingers crossed they’re TLB resistant.
- A couple of videos you may only be able to get on Facebook, or at least I can’t find other sources: Ethiopian coffee ceremony, and INRA/CIRAD’s banana and yam collections in Guadeloupe.
- Speaking of coffee, drink it while you can. And yes, it’s China’s fault.
- The cucumber in England through the ages.
- Gourmet maize in Oaxaca right now.
- All kinds of gourmet food in Peru right now too.
- Ok, ok, a Filipina chef on gourmet heirloom rice too.
Nibbles: Poleward migration, Pulse infographic, Vodka, Ancient horse DNA, Old fish, Certified cacao, On farm book, Coarse millets, Banana diversity, Pearl millet demo
- Species flying poleward.
- FAO unveils pulse infographic. No word on whether any are harvestable by machine.
- Potato farmer adds value the old-fashioned way.
- Talking of old, here’s a really old horse.
- And the oldest evidence of fermentation for food preservation. But you’ll need a strong stomach.
- KitKat is certified crap.
- How (and Why) Farmers Maintain Crop Diversity: The Book. Some reviews.
- And here’s a specific example from India.
- And here, courtesy of Bioversity’s Ann Tutwiler, is why farmers need some help sometimes.
- Oh and here’s another one. People visit ICRISAT genebank in Niger, see stuff they like.
Nibbles: Pharaonic bull, Moving the cheese, Popping the corn, Persian food double, Sweet potato galore
- Cattle in ancient Egypt.
- Because yesterday was National Cheese Day and we missed it.
- The protein to which we owe cheese.
- The anatomy of popcorn.
- Pat Heslop-Harrison interviewed on Iranian saffron.
- And more Persian foodstuffs.
- Orange sweet potato going wide in Mozambique. And where it came from.
Nibbles: Gastronomy edition
- Gastronomy comes to the Amazon.
- Maybe it should come to Tikal too.
- You know it’s already in Mexico.
- Not to mention Peru.
- Preparing decent coffee counts as gastronomy, I guess. But SL28 is not genetically engineered. Not in the usual sense, anyway.
- Not sure that eels have much of a future in gastronomy.
- Into Africa: Indian seeds. And Indian gastronomy along with them?
- Feralization is not domestication in reverse. Lots of gastronomic potential, though.
- Meanwhile…
Brainfood: Barley landrace evaluation, Aceh cattle, Zizania diversity, French apple cores, Vanuatu food security, Tomato genomics, Cacao fermentation, Wild foods, Activist anthropologists, Ancient wheats
- Performance of 50 Lebanese barley landraces (Hordeum vulgare L. subsp. vulgare) in two locations under rainfed conditions. 47 individual plants were as good or better than the 2 checks in terms of grain yield per plant.
- Phylogenetic analysis of Aceh cattle breed of Indonesia through mitochondrial D-Loop region. A specific haplotype, mainly indicus but with some taurus.
- Genetic diversity assessment of in situ and ex situ Texas wild rice (Zizania texana) populations, an endangered plant. Diversity is dynamic in situ, and some of it is missing ex situ.
- Genetic Diversity, Population Structure, Parentage Analysis, and Construction of Core Collections in the French Apple Germplasm Based on SSR Markers. 2163 accessions divide into Old Dessert, Old Cider, and Modern Cultivar subgroups.
- Community Food Security: Resilience and Vulnerability in Vanuatu. High population pressure associated with shorter fallows but higher yields, not associated with purchasing of imported foodstuffs. Not clear what high crop diversity associated with.
- Using genomic repeats for phylogenomics: a case study in wild tomatoes (Solanum section Lycopersicon: Solanaceae). Repetition can be useful.
- The cocoa bean fermentation process: from ecosystem analysis to starter culture development. It takes a microbial community.
- Wild harvest: distribution and diversity of wild food plants in rice ecosystems of Northeast Thailand. There’s much more to rice than rice.
- Free seeds and food sovereignty: anthropology and grassroots agrobiodiversity conservation strategies in the US South. Activist anthropology for better food systems.
- Comparative Study of Hulled (Einkorn, Emmer, and Spelt) and Naked Wheats (Durum and Bread Wheat): Agronomic Performance and Quality Traits. Will need to fiddle with classic baking techniques.