- DNA survey of African village dogs reveals as much diversity as in East Asian village dogs, undermines current ideas about where domestication took place.
- Fossil doubles age of dog domestication.
- “When children felt like buying candy, they ran into their father’s fields and returned with a few grams of opium folded inside a leaf.”
- “The rice, a traditional variety called kintoman, came from my grandfather’s farm. It had an inviting aroma, tasty, puffy and sweet. Unfortunately, it is rarely planted today.”
- “An era of synthetic gums ushered in the near death of their profession, and there are only a handful of men that still make a living by passing their days in the jungle collecting chicle latex…The generational changes in this boom-and-bust lifestyle reflect a pattern that has occurred with numerous extractive economies…”
- Morocco markets prickly pear cactus products.
- TreeAid says that sustainable agriculture depends on, well, trees.
More on Enola
Nibbles: Red rice, Drought squared, Slow Food, Coffee, Cassava, Horses, Wheat, Ketchup
- Saving red rice in India. Note comment from Bhuwon.
- India again: “We have not been able to sow rice. Our corn crop has been destroyed by pests. We have nothing to eat. We have nothing to feed our cattle.”
- Morocco: “The farmers started using more subterranean water, but that has almost been used up, putting us on a straight line to desertification.” But, “[r]esearchers have also introduced new varieties of grain that in laboratory tests have proven resistant to water stress or drought.”
- Another Slow Food interview. Zzzzzzzzzz.
- Cuppa weird joe?
- IITA and others save cassava in West Africa.
- Nice photo essay on a thoroughbred stud farm.
- Take the wheat quiz.
- Where is our heirloom ketchup?
Nibbles: Pork, Cocoyam, Farmers markets, Social media
- Roast pig in Bangkok. Wish I’d known about this place when I visited a few weeks back.
- Do you have Xanthosoma diversity and are you willing to share it? Mary would like to hear from you.
- Amazing diversity at an LA farmers market.
- Social media in the CG, including us!
More on that new Turkish genebank
You may remember a post a few weeks back on a new genebank being planned by the Turkish government, about which I had some questions. Well, Agriculture & Rural Affairs Minister Mehmet Mehdi Eker will kick off building work on July 30. ((Actually the article says June 30 but its use of the future tense makes me think that’s a typo.)) In a statement, the Ministry said:
…we need to assess the current situation in order to protect our biological diversity and genetic sources. There are about 10 thousand plant species and nearly 3 thousand endemic plant species in Turkey. Also, Turkey is considered a center to find genes of a number of plant species which are of great importance for biological researches. Therefore, we decided to establish a seed gene bank in Turkey. The bank will contain genes of 250 thousand plant species.
I suppose that means 250,000 accessions. It sounds to me like this genebank may concentrate on wild species, unlike the one in Izmir. But I’m not sure. Maybe someone out there will give us more details.