The famous British apple collection at Brogdale in Kent, which has been through some vicissitudes this past year, and could do with some good news, is being replanted, and the BBC has a video. Incidentally, I recently learned that the composer Gerald Finzi assembled a selection of heirloom varieties at his country house, Church Farm, Ashmansworth, near Newbury, Berkshire, and that these are included in the national collection at Brogdale, or at least they were. I hope they still are, because Church Farm has been on the market and who knows if the new owner is interested in the likes of Russet, Roxbury Russet, Welford Park Nonsuch, Baxter’s Pearmain, Golden Non Pareil, Mead’s Broading, Norman’s Pippin and Haggerstone Pippin.
Nibbles: Apples, Koraput recognized, Nuts
- Cynthia gives us her personal history with apple diversity, and the history of Tarte Tatin; yum!
- Farmers in Koraput, India, recognized as Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System (GIAHS).
- Ugandan farmers who select one of four new groundnut varieties increase incomes. Good to know. What happens to the old varieties?
Leftovers: Coconuts, Genebank, Vegetables, Famine, Danish, Bissap, Brazil nuts, Dates, Papas y mas, Fruit, Rice, Everything
We found these nibbles at the back of the fridge, and they’re not too mouldy, so lets fry them up before we get anything fresh.
- Boss of India’s agricultural research exhorts international coconut genebank to do more and be heard.
- And, first out of the gate for 2012, Nepal says it will create a new genebank for plants “on the verge of extinction”.
- Immigrant urban agriculture — in Cleveland, Ohio.
- Aid man Edward Carr interviewed: “drought does not equal famine”
- Meetings on “biodiversity” in Europe, under the Danish presidency. Indigestible?
- Hibiscus tea, what a tonic.
- Resources Research goes crazed for book about brazil nuts, and other Amazonian agrobiodiversity.
- A cure for Bayoud disease of dates? And it’s based on medicinal plants!
- Pueblos andinos reciben ejemplares de tubérculos nativos. Otra vez?
- Guerilla grafting? Now there’s an idea for “covert agriculture”. Wonder what the graftees think.
- “The giant panda of the botanical world”? Blimey. A new reserve for real wild rice.
- Huge Satoyama-style paper from Bioversity on THE USE OF AGROBIODIVERSITY BY INDIGENOUS AND TRADITIONAL AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITIES IN: ADAPTING TO CLIMATE CHANGE And they’re the ones doing the shouting.
Nibbles: Wild rice, Food forests, Domestication
- It isn’t rice, but it is wild. And threatened, by disease, dams and climate change. h/t Sustainable Nutrition.
- Food forests. All you can eat blog post, with video goodness.
- Archaeology International goes more-or-less open access. Read all about The Early Rice Project, among other treats.
Brainfood: Cassava in Colombia, Tubers in Peru, Breadfruit diversity, Hominins and elephants, Evolution, Domestication, Mongolian sheep, Roads, Econutrition, South Asia food composition
- Informal “Seed” Systems and the Management of Gene Flow in Traditional Agroecosystems: The Case of Cassava in Cauca, Colombia. Farmers move cassava around a lot.
- Ecological and socio-cultural factors influencing in situ conservation of crop diversity by traditional Andean households in Peru. Farmers should be supported in moving tubers around more.
- Nutritional and morphological diversity of breadfruit (Artocarpus, Moraceae): Identification of elite cultivars for food security. There’s a lot of it.
- Man the Fat Hunter: The Demise of Homo erectus and the Emergence of a New Hominin Lineage in the Middle Pleistocene (ca. 400 kyr) Levant. Disappearance of elephant led to replacement of Homo erectus. Quite a difference from the more recent hominin-elephant dynamic.
- Fitness consequences of plants growing with siblings: reconciling kin selection, niche partitioning and competitive ability. All agriculture is about reconciling kin selection.
- Cultivation and domestication had multiple origins: arguments against the core area hypothesis for the origins of agriculture in the Near East. Revisionism rules.
- Tracing genetic differentiation of Chinese Mongolian sheep using microsatellites. Five populations clustered by fancy science into, ahem, five populations.
- Road connectivity, population, and crop production in Sub-Saharan Africa. Fancy science reveals better roads would be good for agriculture. Hell, my mother-in-law could have told them that.
- Econutrition: Preventing Malnutrition with Agrodiversity Interventions. Home gardening is the way to go.
- Carotenoid and retinol composition of South Asian foods commonly consumed in the UK. Palak paneer is not just good, it’s good for you.