Category: Genebanks

Posted on

Black rice or blueberries? No contest!

An intriguing press release from the American Chemical Society says that in some respects black rice is better than blueberries:

“Just a spoonful of black rice bran contains more health promoting anthocyanin antioxidants than are found in a spoonful of blueberries, but with less sugar and more fiber and vitamin E antioxidants,” said Zhimin Xu, Associate Professor at the Department of Food Science at Louisiana State University Agricultural Center in Baton Rouge, La. … “If berries are used to boost health, why not black rice and black rice bran? Especially, black rice bran would be a unique and economical material to increase consumption of health promoting antioxidants.”

I like black rice, and I like blueberries, but berries have made all the running lately, what with Pavlovsk and everything, so I thought I would descend into genebank database hell in search of black rice. IRRI would be the obvious first stop in such a search, but I came up empty handed. ((External use of IRGCIS refused to load.)) Next stop, the new kid on the block, Genesys. Fun!

IRRI has not yet supplied Genesys with data on hull colour, but the USDA has, and there were more than 300 mapped varieties of black or purple rice. (Click the pic to embiggen.)

Dr Xu says he’d like to see Louisiana farmers growing black rice, and people in the US embrace its use. Well, as a service to them, either go to Genesys to find the variety information, or play with the Google Earth file directly.

Posted on

Nibbles: CIFOR, Weeds, Camelids, Drought, Biofortification, Buckwheat

  • CIFOR has a blog!
  • Nice series of videos on eating weeds.
  • Video on Peru’s “Andean rodeo.” You heard me.
  • Africa needs drought-tolerant maize. Ok, fair enough, but here’s my question. Shouldn’t they have done this study before doing all that breeding? Oh, who knows, maybe they did.
  • “Biofortification will thus remain relevant to poor rural populations in the years to come, as their incomes will still be far too low to afford a more diversified diet.” What? Who says a diversified diet need be expensive?
  • Russia faces looming buckwheat crisis. At least the genetic resources are safe in the Vavilov Institute. Unless of course somebody decides to, I don’t know, build luxury villas there, or something.
Posted on

Nibbles: Eggplant, Cactus domestication, Berries, Conservation, Drought, Conference, Chaffey, Rice relative, Cornus, Adansonia, Pavlovsk, Genebanks, Dams

Posted on

Pavlovsk update

The Associated Press had a big round-up on the threatened Russian genebank at Pavlovsk late last week. We’re linking to the version that appeared at the National Public Radio website because they used lots of photographs, many of which give the lie to statements that the land is not being used. Kudos to AP for doing some fresh reporting. Kudos also to Science magazine, for a report from a correspondent in Moscow. The article is behind a paywall.

We’re still not getting much news out of Russia herself. What exactly is going on, officially? And is anyone there blogging about it or otherwise commenting? If you know, please let us know.