Category: Fruits and nuts

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Irish eyes smiling about apple conservation

FullSizeRenderOur office complimentary copy of Michael Hennerty’s The Heritage Apples Of Ireland has arrived, and it’s a real beauty. We somehow missed the announcement of its publication back in the summer.

The book is written by Dr. Michael Hennerty, who for many years was Head of the Department of Horticulture in University College Dublin, and provides detailed genetic information of 68 different varieties of indigenous Irish apples using high resolution photographs. The descriptors used in the book utilise the current internationally recognised descriptor system and a key is also included to facilitate the identification of historical Irish cultivars by non-experts.

I particularly like the section on “finders and keepers”, people who have been involved in the conservation of Irish apples over the years. People like John George Dalkeith Lamb, who…

…collected old apples from 1945 to 1949 and established the UCD collection. Prof. E.J. Clarke maintained the collection until it was destroyed in 1970. Repatriated in 1996. Now planted at UCD, Belfield, Dublin.

That “repatriated” is intriguing, but I can find no further explanation of it online. Anyone out there know the details?

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Brainfood: Daniel Zohary, Blue dates, Crop diversification, Tunisian oases, Cranberry diversity, Drought breeding, Seed-use watermelon, Cattle history, Apple conservation

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A meaningful date

There is a wonderful piece by the Kitchen Sisters on US National Public Radio about the history of dates in California — and about plant exploration, politics, and people.

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There are about 3400 ha of date palm in the Coachella Valley,  a Southern California desert. Here is a road side view  (note how you can you can estimate the growth rate by comparing with the 2007 street view photo) and here is another grove. Wikipedia says that that the Spanish introduced the date palm to lower California (Mexico) in 1765; but Walter Swingle gets the credit for bringing the plant to the USA (see this letter by David Fairchild). In 1903 he collected Deglet Noor in Biskra, Algeria, and in 1929 he collected the prized cultivar Medjool in Morocco.

Coachella date grower Patricia Laughlin has this to say about that:

When the Medjool dates came in, there were only nine offshoots that all of the present trees come from. These medjools came from the oasis of Bou Denib. It’s been wiped out by a disease in Algeria and Morocco. We have sent back good plant stock to return to those areas from which they originated. My husband and I visited. It’s over the Atlas Mountains from Marrakech — out really in the desert. When we got to Bou Denib, the mayor came out to greet us. It was a big occasion. And he said why would anyone from the United States want to come to Bou Denib? We had worked with the Medjool dates for so many years and to see where they originated was very meaningful for us.

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Nibbles: Quasilocavore, Returning potatoes, Singapore veggies, Floating gardens, Timber trees, Allanblackia, Cranberry glut, Wild turkeys

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Super bananas in the dock

The Gates Foundation has sunk $15 million into developing GMO ‘super bananas’ with high levels of pre-Vitamin A, writes Adam Breasley. But the project is using ‘stolen’ genes from a Micronesian banana cultivar. And what exactly is the point, when delicious, popular, nutritious ‘red bananas’ rich in caroteinoids are already grown around the tropics?

That provocative lede to an article in The Ecologist provoked a number of responses when I posted it on Facebook 1. As not everyone can post comments there, and nobody at all can post comments at The Ecologist, I’ve decided to move the whole thing here.

A couple of comments were actually questions. Anastasia Bodnar asked: Are the existing red banana cultivars suitable for growing where this new variety is intended to be grown? And Sarah Hearne added: And do the red bananas have the same farmer/consumer acceptance in East African and beyond as existing varieties? Good questions all. And Alexandra Zum Felde addressed them, and more, in her comment:

Red bananas — at least ones like those in the photo, not Fe’i bananas — can and are grown where Cavendish are grown (so basically all over the tropics), though they — like many traditional cultivars — are not as productive as Cavendish bananas. But Cavendish are not the issues here — in Uganda the staple banana is Matooke (East African Highland Banana), of which over 180 cultivars exists … and all of which are pretty beta-carotene poor … but local leafy vegetables are full of (pro)vitamins! It would be easier and more cost-effective to re-vamp the image and attractiveness of traditional foods, than to introduce one single GMO variety.

So, are red bananas, whether traditional cultivars or the ones genetically engineered in an Australian lab, the wrong answer to the right question? Discuss.