- The Guardian has a leader on the potato. Please let this year end soon. And thanks, Danny.
- Lucy Appleby RIP.
- Inner city farming in the UK.
- Gary Nabhan on where apples came from, and where they’re going. And more. Thanks again, Danny!
- Tracking bees’ response to climate change by satellite.
- Mars thinks cacao biodiversity is important. No news from Earth.
- The “keyhole gardens” of Lesotho.
Nibbles: Oils, Mango, Agro-tourism
- Oils unpacked.
- Indian mango aficionado grafts 300 varieties on a single tree.
- Agro-tourism parks a great hit in Maharashtra.
It’s a miracle
Synsepalum dulcificum is apparently the latest thing in the salons of the chic.
CARRIE DASHOW dropped a large dollop of lemon sorbet into a glass of Guinness, stirred, drank and proclaimed that it tasted like a “chocolate shake.â€
Nearby, Yuka Yoneda tilted her head back as her boyfriend, Albert Yuen, drizzled Tabasco sauce onto her tongue. She swallowed and considered the flavor: “Doughnut glaze, hot doughnut glaze!â€
Could there be a new export market for the “miracle berry” with its extraordinary ability to change the way things taste?
Speaking of which, I was at a nursery the other day and noticed that they offered plants of Stevia rebaudiana. that’s another of those well-known miracle plants, which is itself sweet, rather than making other things taste weird. I was interested because last I heard, Stevia was not permitted in Europe. Admittedly I haven’t kept up; maybe it is now. Anyway, I niblled on a bit of leaf, and it was remarkably sweet.
Breakfast Nibbles: Blueberries, Tomatoes, Coffee, Assorted seeds, African potato, Branding, Mobiles, Food, Myanmar
- Remember to eat blueberries to remember.
- Darwin’s tomatoes? The genetic change identified.
- Wild coffee conservation. Danny says wild coffee genes assessed at between 0.4 and 1.5 billion US$. Joe not available for comment.
- “But if you don’t grow your seed, you lose your power.”
- Amadumbe being sold to supermarkets in South Africa. Great. But someone please tell me: what the heck is it?
- More coffee? More for coffee!
- “Sometimes our expert is stumped.”
- Mark Bittman makes the case for vegetarianism (and much more) on TED video. Money quote: “It’s not the beta-catotene, it’s the plant.”
- FAO maps Myanmar agriculture.
Breeding clubs
As in many other (most?) walks of life, there is much that professional breeders can learn from “amateurs” (i.e., farmers), and vice versa. The experience of the taro breeders’ club in Samoa is a good example of that. Danny has already blogged for us about this. There are also examples of livestock (and pet) breeders’ clubs, and plenty of them according to Google. Many more than for crops, it looks to me. I don’t know much about such livestock clubs, and would welcome more information on how successful they have been, and whether we who are more into crops can learn anything from their experience. Anyway, there’s a great discussion of the advantages of the club approach to breeding crops for pest resistance in a downloadable recent 1995 IDRC publication. It’s accompanied by a list of crops best avoided by clubs, though the Evil Fruit Lord begs to differ.