- Another one of those fun photoessays on diets around the world. Don’t look too globalized to me.
- Sometimes it’s not such a bad idea for a food to quietly slip away. Take kimchi. Please. The upside of globalization?
- Indian street food is totally immune to globalization, far as I can tell.
- Speaking of globalization, the rise in meat consumption in China is having an effect all over. But the answers are out there… Though some are cooler than others.
- Want to document globalization? You’ll need this incredible resource on the history of the trade in commodities.
- If we all ever eat more seaweed, Zanzibar will make a killing.
- Kew in trouble? One of the great engines of globalization of plant commodities, of course. Surely too big to fail.
- The health effects of diet globalization, you ask? Biofortification conference gearing up in Kigali. Will they listen to alternatives? Any of our readers going, and willing to tell us?
- Is kale making a comeback? Great picture of leaf variation. Among other things.
- I think all these drones could be used to map all those minor, neglected crops, don’t you?
Nibbles: CG diversity pix smackdown, ARTs in Bolivia, Fruits in Central Asia, Terra-i, FAO land use data, Agroforestry, Nagoya, Microwaves, Taxonomist Day, Spring!, Right to Food, Pacific food
- Some fabulous photos of maize diversity from CIMMYT. (IRRI says, I see your diverse maize, and raise you diverse rice.)
- Hope neither goes the way of that of some Andean roots and tubers in Bolivia. Or fruits in Central Asia. Though neither is doing terribly, in truth.
- And too bad you can’t monitor that the way you can forests. Or land use in general for that matter.
- World Agroforestry Centre calls for more, er, agroforestry. Will Defra listen?
- Maybe it’s too busy consulting on the Nagoya Protocol. Wonder how good that will be for agroforestry.
- I don’t care what anyone says, I like microwaves.
- Wait, we missed Hug a Taxonomist Day?
- And Persian New Year?
- De Schutter’s final report. Main message not lost on the Pacific island countries.
Nibbles: Genebanks trifecta, Marley Coffee, Sorghum noodles, Biofortification Q&A, African oils, Cow diversity, Coffee course, Fructose deconstructed, Vanuatu chocolate, Candy bar phylogenies, Japanese copycats, Charger beer
- CIP’s genebank in the limelight.
- Egypt’s genebank in the limelight.
- Australia’s genebank in the limelight. Limelight fast running out…
- Ah, but genebanks not the only ones with cool videos: farmers in the limelight.
- Yeah, it’s not just about the genebanks. Markets can help, I suppose. Especially if you have a famous name.
- As with coffee, so with sorghum. Biofortified or not. All we need now is an agribusiness incubator, and here it is, courtesy of ICRISAT. But what will Japanese farmers think?
- Same again for assorted African oils?
- The diversity of cows has been driven by markets too.
- Coffee 101 at UCDavis. Maybe they’ll invite Mr Marley to teach.
- You want fructose in that coffee? No, probably not.
- Maybe you prefer chocolate. From Vanuatu, natch. Looks like high quality stuff too, but even crap chocolate has its uses, like teaching taxonomy for instance.
- No, you’re more a Japanese bourbon person, aren’t you? Wait, do you need barley for that? I’m sure those young Japanese farmers will be all over this.
Nibbles: Peanut history, Capsicum history, Sequencing history, Globalized rice, Sustainable salmon, Women & agriculture, Climate change & yields, Forest conservation, Bumblebee conservation
- Lots to catch up on, strap yourselves in.
- The South’s original peanut is the Carolina African runner, and it is in need of help.
- Saudi Aramco World does its usual class number, this time on chili peppers. And, in a similar vein, more than you probably want to know about Tabasco sauce.
- The evolution of DNA sequencing. In 76 slides, no less, but worth it.
- Japanese rice grown in Uruguay for U.S. hipsters. Gotta love globalization.
- Sustainable salmon at long last?
- Mind the gender gap.
- Latest modelling suggests 2% crop yield decline per decade, assuming modest 2 degree C rise in temperatures by 2050. The original paper. We are so screwed. (Well, Uruguayan rice growers and U.S. hipsters aren’t, not so much.) No, really. No, wait…
- You know, if we need supercomputers to tell us that forest corridors are good for seed dispersal, it’s no wonder we can’t stop global warming. Just kidding, I think it’s great that supercomputers get a break from climate models every once in a while. Oh, and isolated trees not entirely useless either.
- Native wild bumblebees also in trouble, not just honeybees.
- So did you miss us? Even more tomorrow to clear the decks.
A plateful of Camargue Red Rice
How far back into the mists of time, do you suppose, have the French versions of the fabled gnarled rustics of Sicily been nurturing the equally fabled red rice of the Camargue? The question occurred to me as I walked past a shop window in Bonn recently, and saw this delectable display of various products of that region, including said rice. Well, it turns out that although rice has been grown in the Camargue for centuries, this particular, trendily healthy variety is of somewhat more recent vintage.
A chance cross between the wild rice and a short grain rice was discovered in 1983 by a René Griotto (died 1989.) He found it growing at the foot of the Montmajor Abbey. Development of the cross was pursued in conjunction with the French “Institut national de la recherche agronomique” (INRA.) They’d grow plants, select seed from certain plants, then grow those, till finally they settled on the plant breed known today as Camargue Red Rice.
Wild rice? What wild rice grows in France? I asked my go-to guy for everything Oryza:
Must be weedy rice introduced with a crop. France is way outside the known limits of distribution of wild rice. 100 years ago a red rice introgression would have been rigorously weeded out. In the 1980s Europeans were becoming aware of the health benefits of non-white food. I wonder if they actually thought red rice = anti-oxidants = anti-cancer, which is today’s mantra.
Here’s some more from an FAO publication on weed management:
The seeds of most weedy biotypes of O. sativa and O. glaberrima have a pigmented pericarp resulting from the presence of a variable content of different antocyanins, cathekins and cathekolic tannins (Baldi, 1971).
The red pigmentation is a dominant character and is controlled by more than one gene (Leitao et al. 1972; Wirjahardja et al. 1983)
The red layer of the weed grains harvested with the crop should be removed with an extra milling but this operation results in broken grains and grade reduction (Smith, 1981; Diarra et al. 1985a, 1985b).
Weedy biotypes of O. sativa have been differentiated into indica or japonica types, on the basis of the morphological and physiological traits, isozymes, RFLP (Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism), RAPD (Random Amplified Polymorphic DNA) and AFLP (Amplied Fragment Length Polymorphism) markers.
According to a study funded by the European Community, weeds collected in Mediterranean rice fields belonging to the japonica group and weeds from Brazil were close to the indica group (Ghesquière, 1999). In this study no specific allele of weeds were found which can serve as a diagnostic marker to easily determine the varietal origin of the weedy forms. Nevertheless, a great deal of evidence would seem to show that the primary origin of red rice can come from distant crosses between indica and japonica varieties.
Vaughan et al. (2001) pointed out that the several samples of weedy biotypes collected in the United States belong not only to the indica and japonica subspecies, but also to the O. rufipogon and O. nivara species.
Anyway, before you ask, I can’t find a reference to the red rice of the Camargue in any of the genebank databases that I know. It’s definitely not in IRRI. There’s no data at all on any rice collections in France on Eurisco, although other countries do have substantial collections of French rice, in particular Russia. WIEWS does list a number of important rice collections in France, but they seem to be international, with only some 9 samples from France itself. GRIN also has significant holdings of French rice, but nothing that I can see on Camargue Red Rice specifically, ((By the way, what colour do you get when you use saffron to make a red rice risotto alla Milanese? Don’t worry, I don’t expect an answer, it’s just my clumsy way of working into the conversation a link to a recent piece on the phylogeny of Crocus.)) at least going by passport information. We know INRA have been having trouble with their grape collection. Do they even have a collection of local rices? Or are they relying on those gnarled Camargue rustics, and clever niche marketing to hip, health-conscious foodies of course, ((Coincidentally, there was something in the news yesterday about some recent attempts to protect a somewhat different sector of French agriculture.)) to keep them going?