- ICRAF are having their Science Week. Follow it on Twitter. And let us know if you’re there and want to write about anything agrobiodiversity related that comes up.
- Plant Genome Evolution 2013 has been and gone, alas, but Chris Pires has storified the whole thing, pretty much. Lots of crops in there. But it’s disappeared now, of course.
- Bioversity and FAO redesign their websites. Tell them what you think.
- Diane Ragone talks breadfruit. With video goodness.
- Aussie researcher talks about landing Gates grant to improve African livestock. Hopefully some conservation in there somewhere.
- Decentralizing data: to empower communities; and to empower geeks.
- Data, you said? Here’s data on why Kansas needs wheat breeders.
- The world’s chief agriculture scientists want to share genetic resources. Good of them.
- Europe used to have more melons.
- Enough with the Peruvian superfoods meme, please.
- I may have said this before, but it’s still valid: I need a drink.
Nibbles: Coca, Rice breeding, Artisanal cheese, Win win, Microbes, Potato dyes, Beans, Agroforestry & conservation, Sweet potato marketing
- Bolivia ramps up coca production. Sniff.
- Tamil Nadu ramps up rice breeding.
- Bulgaria ramps up artisanal cheese production.
- Collaboration between organic and biotech ramped up. In other news, pigs fly.
- Ramp up use of microbes, microbiologist says. Nobody surprised.
- Americans ramp up production of purple potatoes.
- Everyone ramps up bean production. To save the planet, no less.
- Can agroforestry be used to ramp up tree conservation? Well, maybe?
- Need to ramp up sweet potato marketing.
Nibbles: Golden Rizzzzzz, Agronomy meet, Pricey poultry, Pricey Indian food, Target environments, NUS galore, G&T
- The Golden Rice thing rumbles endlessly on.
- I wonder whether it was discussed at the First International Agronomy Day. I bet that fertilizer thing in Malawi was.
- The world’s most expensive cock. Made you look!
- I wonder whether you can select sex in chickens like you can in cattle.
- Anyway, speaking of expensive agrobiodiversity, a celebrity economist rounds up links on Indian food price inflation. Must have seen our recent stuff on onions. But can you grow them on the roof?
- The secret of breeding? Location, location, location.
- List of “indigenous” fruits and vegetables of allegedly potential global importance without a damn scientific name anywhere. Annoying on many levels.
- Mind you, this piece on the threats faced by the wild herbs of Crete also doesn’t have any names.
- See, you can include a scientific name of an underutilized plant and not look unbearable geeky. Well, kinda. Although this press release on burgeoning collaboration on NUS manages to avoid mentioning even common names.
- Oh I so need a drink.
- And some cheese.
Nibbles: Superweeds, Old spices, Companies and nutrition, Bananas and cacao, Coffee pix, Potato restaurant, Millet processing, Aussie social herbarium, Rockefeller Story, Apple nutrition, And a bottle of rum…
- Those who like that sort of thing will no doubt enjoy this discussion at Biofortified of that recent paper about a herbicide resistance transgene possibly giving a fitness advantage to weeds. And more.
- As for me, I’d rather read about Neolithic spices. Or beer.
- Some food companies more committed to nutrition than others shock. But good to have the data.
- Bananas to the rescue in cacao plantations. If I had the willpower I’d try to mash it up with the previous thing. Anyway, coffee next?
- Eating more spuds in the Village. Eating more millets in the village.
- Australian National Herbarium gets a Facebook page.
- The history of the Rockefeller Foundation’s agriculture work. That would include the Green Revolution.
- Really confused Telegraph piece on heirloom and/or organic apples.
- I guess I missed National Rum Day. But I’m nevertheless glad that it exists.
In search of the elusive asier — pickling cucumbers with a difference
Fermentation is absolutely my favourite food process. Not just for bread, beer and yoghurt, but also for proper pickled cucumbers. ((And by proper, I mean actually fermented, not merely soused in vinegar etc. )) So when a bread-baking blog I follow wrote about recreating a long-ago taste of pickled cucumbers, my heart went pitter-pat. I read Joanna’s story, and skipped on over to the recipe itself. Alas, these are not proper pickles. Indeed at one point the author insists “Be sure that when you boil the vinegar for the second time that it’s a good full, rolling boil to kill any bacteria”. Not my kind of thing at all. I could have just called it a day, except that there’s another aspect to the story that got me going. The cucumbers themselves seem to be rather special. Not easy to search online for, because most search engines seem to think you’re interested in Asia, so I went all social and put a call out to my friends in places where they might know about these things. ((Sincere thanks to all who answered the call.))
Ah yes, said Ove:
They are a group of cucumbers with thicker “flesh” than ordinary cucumbers. “The ‘Nordic Encyclopedia of Horticulture’ (5th edition 1945) names four varieties: ‘Dansk Asie’, ‘Langelands Asie’, ‘Middellang’ and ‘Ideal’”.
And he helpfully provided a photo.
Though there’s something to be said for pickled cucumber seed cavity, it isn’t much, so now I was very intrigued. I turned, first, to the USDA’s descriptors for Cucumis. That offers two characteristics of interest: cavitydiam, measured in mm at the thickest part of the fruit, and frtdia_a, measured likewise in cm. A quick download and mashup, and I’d have a seed cavity to fruit diameter ratio for all the cucumber accessions! Unfortunately, although they are listed as characteristic descriptors for Cucumis species, I couldn’t find a way actually to search for them. Agriculture and Agrifood Canada was even less helpful. ((In my browser there was no way to insert the character I wanted to search for.)) A document from ECP/GR mentioned flesh thickness and seed hull (which could be cavity or testa, I suppose) but was no more helpful.
Ah but … I had names! USDA knows nothing about the names from the Nordic Encyclopedia of Horticulture. The Garden Seed Inventory (6th edition) from Seed Savers Exchange does however list Langelang Giant ((That second g is surely a typo, as it also lists Giant of Langeland as a synonym.)) and says it has “white flesh with excel. texture, small core”. Langelands Kæmpe (Langelands Giant) is still available in Europe and a similar variety called Fatum in Germany. The Seed Savers Exchange Yearbook for 2012, which lists all varieties offered by members, doesn’t seem to have any of the named varieties, although there are several that have larger or smaller cores than normal.
Most interesting, for me, was an entry for Danish Pickling in Vegetables of New York, Vol I Part IV, The Cucurbits.
This is a comparatively new variety which was introduced in 1912 by L. Daehnfeldt of Odense, Denmark … The variety produces fruits which are extremely large and long and thickly covered with fine spines. … Flesh medium thick, very fine texture, white in color, rather tart. Seed mass small and solid, with few seeds formed.
It is hard to tell how spiny Joanna’s Langelands is, but I think I see quite a few.
I couldn’t find much trace of any of the others in the Internet, with no useful sign of Ideal, probably because the word is just too common, even in conjunction with cucumber. However, the 1975 European Common Catalogue lists Ideal as a synonym of Delikateß added at that date, while Middellang was deleted from the common catalogue.
And there I came almost to an end. The name “asier” remained a puzzle. Were these Scandinavian favoured cucumbers originally from Asia? No, said Ove. “Asie (singular, asier is the plural) comes from Indian/Persian achár, originally meaning ‘bamboo shoots pickled in vinegar and spices’.” To which Stephen added “Wonder if it’s related to the as- in asparagus which also means shoot, also from west Asia..?” Over to you, philologists.
And what have I learned? That it remains incredibly difficult to find varieties with specific characteristics, even when you know what you’re looking for. That a cucumber with a small seed core is probably a great idea, even if you’re not planning to ferment it. That I would quite like to try growing it (hint, hint).
Oh, and that not everyone is as keen on fermentation as I am. If you want to get a bit deeper into it, can I recommend this very introductory podcast, in which, among other gems, Sandor Katz – fermentation revivalist – expressly compares the value of diverse microbes in fermentation and diverse varieties on farms?