- Domesticated: How Cultivated Species Altered Ancient Silk Road Societies. Different stages of adopting and intensifying the use of domesticates (livestock, horses, and later crops) reshaped economies, mobility, and social organization in north-central Asia, ultimately enabling the emergence of the Silk Road. So domesticated species were as active drivers of Eurasian historical development as of prehistory.
- Ancient grains illuminate the mosaic origin of domesticated wheat. Domesticated wheat arose through repeated hybridizations between distinct wild populations carrying complementary non-shattering spike mutations, followed by ongoing gene flow and regional adaptation, making domestication a prolonged and interconnected process. Long before it got to the Silk Road.
- A single hybrid origin of cultivated peanut. Domestication of the peanut seems to have been easier than that of wheat.
- A synthetic eco-evolutionary proposal for the conservation of wild relatives of the olive tree. If we ever have to re-domesticate the olive, we should make sure these 53 wild populations are conserved.
- Westward expansion of pearl millet agriculture into the Lac de Guiers basin, Senegal, by c. AD 200. I wonder what the Sahelian equivalent of the Silk Road was.
- Horticultural intensification and plant-based diets of 18th century CE Waikato Māori in Aotearoa New Zealand. At least some Maori ate predominantly sweet potato and taro during the Traditional Period. Which of course were brought to Aotearoa via the ara moana, which, stretching a point, is the South Pacific equivalent of the Silk Road.
- Increase in wild animal consumption across Central Africa. Yeah, but who needs domesticated species anyway.
- Fermentation as food pedagogy: insights into how teaching fermentation facilitates engagement with the food system. Are fermentation microbes domesticated?
Uprooting crop diversity
Moving house is never any fun, but it’s particularly tricky for collections of crop diversity. You have to get the new facilities all ready, hundreds or even thousands of seed packets or test tubes or indeed live plants need to be kept safe and sound during the process, and then re-established in their new digs, and possibly new people may need to be hired and trained. Safe to say, you probably want to avoid relocating genebanks unless absolutely necessary, which is why it’s not all that common.
Surprising then to come across two examples within a few days.
The Domaine de Vassal grapevine collection in France 1 is being moved to save it from the encroaching waters of the Mediterranean. Or maybe it was a problem with the lease? Anyway, it’s been in the works for at least 10 years, but it does seem to be finally happening. Despite, ahem, some reservations.
The rub with the new proposed site is that only a portion of its soil is sand-based. The collection is destined for a hillside of limestone-clay soils where the vines would be grafted onto rootstock.
“A heresy!” Deiss protested, saying grafting compromises the authenticity of the vines.
In contrast, USDA’s National Soybean Germplasm Collection on the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus 2 was supposed to be relocated in fiscal 2026, that was stopped by various stakeholders, but the whole thing is back on the agenda for fiscal 2027. The issue seems to be where the collection can be conserved most cost-effectively, but there may also be a bit of local politics involved as well. Predictably, I suppose.
“Having that vast collection so accessible to U. of I. researchers directly benefits Illinois farmers,” said Abigail Peterson, director of agronomy for the Illinois Soybean Association. “Whether it’s a new disease or soy oleic, I think the germplasm collection is the only avenue to explore and develop new traits. It’s just a huge tool in our toolbox.”
Good luck to the people involved in both cases. Whatever happens, I’m sure we all hope the collections remain safe and available for the long term.
Nibbles: Peruvian agrotourism, RSA heirloom apple, Wild tea in China, Native American seeds, Indian chiles, Genebanks, Kenyan tree planting
- Agrobiodiversity inspires tourism in the Andes of Peru.
- South African fruit exporters does its (small) bit for heirloom apple conservation.
- Wild tea doing just fine in the Shunhuangshan National Nature Reserve in Hunan Province, China. Even when harvested by local communities. Looks great for tourism too.
- Native communities in Nebraska getting some support for saving and exchanging seeds.
- Women are in charge of chiles in Tamil Nadu.
- Popular Science does genebanks. At least one genebank has tourism potential, I’d say.
- Want to support forest landscape restoration through native tree planting in Kenya? Go to MyFarmTrees, and help keep Kenya a tourism hotspot.
Nibbles: Crop mapping, Climate change impacts, Rice cheese, Andean blueberry, Rare apples, Hungarian genebank, Old seed collection
- AI doesn’t recognize tropical agriculture very well.
- So presumably it can’t easily be used in assessing climate change impacts in agricultural heritage systems? FAO has some ideas on how to do it.
- Maybe rice heritage systems can be used to make cheese.
- I bet Andean blueberry (Vaccinium floribundum) goes great with rice cheese.
- But if not, heritage apples will probably do.
- The Hungarian genebank is hoping to inject heritage grains into non-heritage agricultural systems. AI and FAO unavailable for comment.
- Maybe AI can help with the mystery of this old seed collection at the Natural History Museum, London.
Brainfood: History edition
- Phylogenetics and evolution of Digitaria grasses, including cereal crops fonio, raishan and Polish millet. The history of wild Digitaria goes back 2–6 million years.
- Biogeography of Crop Progenitors and Wild Plant Resources in the Terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene of West Asia, 14.7–8.3 ka. This is what the distribution of crop wild relatives looked like in West Asia 10 thousand years ago or thereabouts. No Digitaria, but plenty of other stuff.
- Ancient use and long-distance transport of the Four Corners Potato (Solanum jamesii) across the Colorado Plateau: Implications for early stages of domestication. At roughly the same time, a couple continents and an ocean over, a local potato species was being processed outside its rage. Was it cultivated? Do the math.
- State formation across cultures and the role of grain, intensive agriculture, taxation and writing. And a few thousand years later, there were domesticated grains, states, and taxes. In that order. Do the math.
- The Archaeology of Olive Oil Production in Roman and Pre-Roman Italy. Pretty sure the Romans had a state and taxes. They also had domesticated olives.
- Wines of Fire and Earth: Exploring the Volcanic Terroirs of the Canary Islands – a Case Study. No Romans on the Canaries, but plenty of vines.
- Black Death Land Abandonment Drove European Diversity Losses. The Romans and their successors, with their cereals, olives and grapes, were surprisingly good for landscape floristic diversity. The Black Death, not so much.
- The decades-old fantasy of enhancing pigeonpea productivity. Well that’s a bit of a letdown after a 6 million year journey.
- Past, present and future of local crop evolution. That’s because we needed Indigenous people and local communities to show us the way.