Lost African fruits found.
Carse of Gowrie gung-ho for old orchards
The Perthshire Advertiser reports on efforts in that neck of the woods to preserve and revitalize old orchards and the varieties they contain. I didn’t know this, but the Carse of Gowrie (which sounds like an ancient honorific title but is, in fact, a stretch of land north of Edinburgh on the north side of the Firth of Tay) is an ancient centre of fruit-growing in Scotland. A joint effort by local authorities and others has conducted a survey and is examining ways of making more of the remaining old orchards — 28 of 51 have already been lost — and their trees. There’s a meeting on 30th January. If anyone there is reading this, we’d love to know more.
Apples unmoved
One of the bits of news we missed while we were resting and relaxing as hard as we were: the UK’s collection of apples and other fruits is staying at Brogdale. This may strike you as no-news news. It isn’t.
Long-standing readers will remember that the UK government put management of the site out to tender, and that two of the proposals required moving the entire collection to a new site. This seemed like a slightly daft idea, at least from our perspective. So it is good to relate that the management contract was awarded to Reading University, who will be leaving the collection where it is.
The Visitor Centre and sales areas are being expanded, and it could be that the collection is now poised to play a more important role in spreading the good news about all those fruit varieties that aren’t available in little plastic bags in the supermarket.
It has been a long and complex struggle, and it is not clear what the future of the Brogdale Horticultural Trust. We’ll try and keep informed.
Agriculture illuminates Art illuminates Agriculture
Artists do the darndest things. From WorldChanging, a report on several art projects that involve agriculture as their theme. I was particularly intrigued by three of them. The Acorn Pig asks how long a region famed for its bacon can live on its laurels. Milk maps the movements of links along the chain that turns milk into cheese. And F.R.U.I.T. uses fruit to open the eyes of urban consumers. Each is great fun and a fine time waster, if that’s what you need. But each also has serious points to make about the nature of agriculture and eating today. I just wish artists would do their art and leave writers to write; things might be a lot easier to comprehend.
A mighty wind
My recent post about lighting strikes in a coconut genebank was picked up by the excellent Coconut Google Group and generated some interesting responses. In particular, there’s a comment from Charles Clement of the National Institute of Amazonian Research in Manaus, Brazil recounting how a high-velocity wind blast — an Amazonian wind storm — took out a large chunk of his peach palm (Bactris gasipaes) genebank. Ex situ conservation in field genebanks can be a risky business indeed. The solutions are clear: more replications within collections, cleverly distributed in space; safety duplication of the entire collection somewhere else entirely (in vitro or as seeds as appropriate); and complementary conservation in situ. But that all costs money. I would say that most food crop accessions maintained in field genebanks around the world are unique. Take coconut. The Coconut Genetic Resources Database records 1416 accessions from 28 genebanks in 23 countries. More than 600 of them are represented by a single accession.