Norway Minister of Agriculture and Food Lard Peder Brekk praised Tay Gipo, a farmer who, despite having only four years of formal education, discovered a rice variety that proved to be high-yielding and pest resistant, the sample of which is among the thousands of seeds kept at the global seed vault.
Millennial beans
Nice enough beans, ((And thanks to Bisse for letting me use her flickr pic.)) but is the story circulating about them really true?
The story of Anasazi beans varies, depending on who is telling it. In popular mythology, the beans were uncovered by an anthropologist, who discovered a 1,500 year old tightly sealed jar of the beans at a dig in New Mexico. Some of the beans germinated, and the new variety of bean entered cultivation again.
I tried to track the story down, and the closest I got to paydirt, I think, was a passage in Beans: A History by Ken Albala. But even that is pretty vague really. Archaeologists from UCLA somewhere in the midwest in the 1980s, or maybe 1950s, uncover a clay pot sealed with pine tar which they carbon date to 500 BCE. Some of the beans sprout and an intrepid businessman markets them. Yeah, right. To go back to the source of the previous quote:
Since most botanists agree that most beans are unable to germinate after approximately 50 years, it is more probable that the beans remained in constant cultivation in the Southwest, probably in Native American gardens, and that they were picked up by companies looking for new “boutique beans.”
There are plenty of companies marketing Anasazi beans now. But actually it is not impossible for legume seeds to keep their viability for more than 50 years — that’s what genebanks are for. And the dry, relatively cool conditions of an Arizona cave might just be good enough to ensure the survival of a few beans for centuries.
Turkey offers D-8 agrobiodiversity conservation help
There’s a bit of follow-up on the news from a few weeks back that Turkey was planning to build another genebank. At a meeting of the D-8 countries (Malaysia, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Egypt and Nigeria), Turkey’s Agriculture and Rural Affairs Minister Mehmet Mehdi Eker proposed that “the seed bank to be established within D8 countries be housed in Turkey.” So it will be a sort of regional backup facility? Hard to say. The plot thickens.
Nibbles: Cacao, Forbes, Gum arabic, Bees, Private sector, Kumquats, Maize, Edible weeds, Herbs, Medicinals, Banana wine, Cachaca. Obamas’ dog
- The history of cacao cultivation, breeding and conservation in Trinidad explained.
- The latest update from Adam searching for seeds around the world. Go, dude.
- “Uganda exports 0.1% of the world’s gum Arabica…” Hardly seems worth it.
- Giving bees a hand. It’s hard to be a bee in the city.
- An active participation is required from the private sector and non-government organisations to take technological advances in farming and its practices to the grassroots level.”
- Kumwhat? Kumquat, that’s what.
- Bush sells maize. Maize surrenders.
- Let them eat weeds.
- But don’t let Thais eat herbs!
- Climate change bad for medicinal plants too.
- Banana wine in Malawi. Pass the bottle.
- How to make cachaca. A couple of friends and I once spent a night looking for the best caipirinhas in Santa Cruz de la Sierra. Can’t remember if we found them.
- First Dog found.
Using wild rice to fight pests
Well, maybe. The article in The Monitor is a bit confused. Yes, there are wild rices in Uganda. I know because I was (marginally) involved in the 1997 Sida-IRRI project which collected wild Oryza in Eastern and Southern Africa. The material has been conserved since then in the National Genetic Plant Resources Centre for Crops in Entebbe, and has now been evaluated — successfully, it would seem — for resistance to Yellow Mottle Virus. Which is great. But the crossing with cultivated rice has not started in Uganda, I don’t think. The crosses that are alluded to in the article seem rather to have been between Asian rice and cultivated African rice (Oryza glaberrima), presumably aiming to replicate the success of Nerica in West Africa. Anyway, good luck to Drs John Mulumba Wasswa and Jimmy Lamo with the breeding programme.