Nibbles: Biodiversity economics, ICARDA social network, Beyond food miles, Heirlooms on BBC, Cannabis, Research funding, Cacao diversity, Agriculture from the air, Sustainable intensification example, Research whine, Japanese botanic garden visit, European PGR network, Tribal Glycene, Youth in agriculture

The relationships among food plants

…I wasn’t able to find out if Wasabia and Armoracia are much related, though I doubt it.

No doubt I gave up too easily, something else I probably wouldn’t do now, like alliterate post titles and neglect to search for ex situ holdings. Anyway, the paper Toward a Global Phylogeny of the Brassicaceae ((Mol. Biol. Evol. (2006) 23 (11): 2142-2160. doi: 10.1093/molbev/msl087)), which came out a few months before that 2006 blog post on mine on wasabi which I have been revisiting, clearly relegates Eutrema (aka Wasabia) and Armoracia to quite distinct clades of the Brassicaceae (click on the phylogenetic diagram to see for yourself). Thanks to Ruaraidh for tracking that down. Not least because it gives me a chance to also link to yesterday’s post at The Botanist in the Kitchen on the phylogenetic tree of food plants in general, and nevermind that it doesn’t seem to feature wasabi.

Nibbles: Value chains, CAP, Intercropping, Tree trouble, Phenotyping

After the storm

Despite Sandy, NPR’s Planet Money, which is made in New York, had a brief podcast on Friday. After The Flood, The Backup Plan examined the different ways in which the US economy speeds recovery after natural disasters. ((But not, interestingly enough, after financial disaster, a point raised by the podcast but not actually dealt with.)) One of those ways is insurance and, even more so, reinsurance.

Those are the guys who insure the insurers, and while the insurance business as a whole is certainly aware of the impact of climate change on their business model, one J. Eric Smith, CEO of Swiss Re Americas, was at pains to point out that their reserves are plenty big enough to pony up for at least a couple of big natural disasters simultaneously. That’s reassuring.

When asked who insures the re-insurers, Smith was forthright:

We’re insured by diversification.

Just sayin’.

Brainfood: Chinese fermented fish, Yeast diversity, Wild papayas, Milpa nutrition, Rare wild sunflower, Albanian pomegranate, Wheat mixtures, Climate change yield decline