Featured

June 22, 2009

Featured: Chillies

Jacob casts gentle doubts on chile pepper domestication:

Intriguing explanation. But I wonder why the disperser birds and mammals are needed.

The thing is, he may be correct.

June 21, 2009

Features: Ug99

Dave Wood comments on UG99 myths, and then adds, perhaps provocatively, that

The current fashion for the on-farm conservation of crop diversity ignores the inevitable conservation of diverse plant diseases, some of which, like Ug99 of wheat, can cross continents on the wind and threaten crop production globally.

“Ignores” may be a bit strong here. Is not (one of the) explicit point(s) of on-farm conservation to allow continued co-evolution of crop and pest? On-farmers, over to you!

June 20, 2009June 20, 2009

Featured: Madumbe

Patience partially pays; Bob answers Luigi’s year-old “what the heck is it?”

The word is Zulu, but also is also anglicized as Madumbe as in Zulu the “A” is almost silent. The plant is a Taro species grown in Natal and Eastern Cape in South Africa and looks more like the common Arum than the tropical Taro, the corm looks like the Arum corm. Just boiled it is delicious, unlike the Taro which is rather bland.

What we really want (obviously) is a binomial. Anyone?

June 17, 2009

Featured: Iwanaga-san

Our friend Yurie makes sense of that Japanese video:

2 comedians visit Iwanaga-san to find out about research on agriculture that he’s working on. Iwanaga-san suggests that they would have a discussion (debate/battle) on the importance of agricultural biodiversity.

June 14, 2009

Featured: Rome vs Carthage

Dirk Enneking takes Luigi to task:

What is wrong with repatriating germplasm? Isn’t your argument questioning the role of national genebanks and genetic sovereignty? Is Rome reviving its old rivalry with Carthage?

Let the games begin!

Fresh Nibbles

Grinding, fermenting, and detoxifying our way to bigger brains — an anthropologist makes the case that food processing, historically women’s work, did as much for human evolution as the mammoth-spearing got credit for.
Speaking of transforming raw ingredients into something civilization-defining: a Japanese temple has been quietly perfecting vegan cooking for 700 years, no marketing department required.
Meanwhile in the Philippines, Naturland, the international association for organic farming from Germany, is linking up with Global Seed Savers Philippines, to help farmers get their hands on indigenous crop diversity before it disappears.
If you want to see what “future-proofing seeds” looks like at scale, the National Soybean Germplasm Collection just turned 100: a century of squirreling away soybean diversity, just in case.
Kazakhstan wants in on the squirreling too: plans are moving forward for a new genebank to safeguard agricultural biodiversity across Islamic Organization for Food Security member states.
The University of Reading is also 100, and in celebration scientists there harvested beans from its cacao collection (yes, it has a cacao collection) to make Britain’s first homegrown chocolate bar since 1932, a novelty act with a serious undertone: climate change is squeezing cacao’s traditional growing belt.
And in Italy, the squeeze is already showing up on the balance sheet: Parmesan’s “Fort Knox” — $350 million of cheese squirreled away as loan collateral — is feeling the heat, with rising cooling costs and falling yields rattling wine and olive oil too.

Published on August 16, 2026