- Of course garlic and dill are innovative crops – if you live in the Pamirs.
- So is Stevia, in Spain.
- A big new book on saving your own seeds. Ignore the rhetoric, and don’t try this in Europe, folks.
- Crops for the Future calls Jatropha a “debacle”. Hard to argue with that.
- All about CIMMYT at an agro-biodiversity fair.
- Put a price tag on natural resources, and you risk undermining common ownership.
Sacramental varieties
The CIMMYT genebank holds about 13,000 wheat lines (from a couple hundred populations) from Mexico that they call “sacramental wheats.” This collection was put together by the late Bent Skovmand, who established the CIMMYT genebank back in the 1970s. Sometimes collected in monasteries and cemeteries, and generally restricted to the fringes of cultivated zones, these mainly spring bread wheats are the remnants of the varieties introduced by the Spanish into the New World. You can see the collecting sites in the map above right. They were brought across the Atlantic both to provide familiar food, but also to make the sacramental bread used for Holy Communion. An excellent book relating this history is “Que vivan los tamales! Food and the making of Mexican identity” by Jeffrey M. Pilcher.
Here’s my question. Are there some varieties that would have been used only for Holy Communion? I’ve heard it said that this was the case for grape varieties and sacramental wine, although I can find no evidence online for that, or indeed for purely sacramental bread wheat varieties. So I’m turning to the wisdom of the crowd. That means you. Are you aware of any wheat or grape varieties that are (or were) used solely (or mainly, let’s give ourselves some room for maneuver here) to produce sacramental bread or wine for the Eucharist? Or do you know someone who might know? Either way, leave us a comment, please.
Nibble: Colombian cassava, ITPGRFA in Costa Rica, Inca foods, Chaffey, Plantation, Artificial meadows, Squash, Wheat genome, Papyrus islands
- Caribbean coast of Colombia high in cassava genetic diversity. Shakira alerted.
- Costa Rica getting to grips with ITPGRFA. Not many people hurt.
- Fox News Latino has a dietician tell us about Inca foods. In other news, Fox News has a Latino bit.
- Plant Cuttings!
- Did you celebrate the International Day of Struggle against Monoculture Tree Plantations? And does what’s happening with açaí qualify as plantations?
- The London Olympics backlash begins. If you don’t agree with all that, here’s how to make your own meadow. Or restore one. Any crop wild relatives in all meadow-making?
- Nice pic of squash diversity.
- Very geeky presentation on how sequencing the wheat genome is going to solve all our problems. If you can follow it, you’re already convinced.
- Floating plastic islands full of papyrus plants will save Lake Naivasha. I don’t know, but I’d sure like to see it.
Brainfood: Organic ag, Garlic conservation costs, Spelt malting, Wild rice genetics, Diversity and ecosystem function, Old late blight, Urbanization and biodiversity, Seed laws, DNA from herbaria, Fruit & veg & school, Quinoa bars, Maize introgression
- Organic vegetable farms are not nutritionally disadvantaged compared with adjacent conventional or integrated vegetable farms in Eastern Australia. Something for the next meta-analysis.
- Comparing costs for different conservation strategies of garlic (Allium sativum L.) germplasm in genebanks. It depends.
- Malting process optimization of spelt (Triticum spelta L.) for the brewing process. You can make a decent beer from spelt. Can I do the evaluation?
- Genetic differentiation of Oryza ruffipogon [sic] Griff. from Hainan Island and Guangdong, China Based on Hd1 and Ehd1 genes. It’s different, because of different ecology.
- Plant species diversity and genetic diversity within a dominant species interactively affect plant community biomass. In other words, the higher the genetic diversity within the dominant species, the further the effect of species diversity on biomass goes from negative to positive. Bottom line is that you have to consider multiple diversity levels in relating biodiversity to ecosystem functioning. At least in this ecosystem.
- Evidence for presence of the founder Ia mtDNA haplotype of Phytophthora infestans in 19th century potato tubers from the Rothamsted archives. “…the founder Ia mtDNA haplotype survived in potato tubers after 1846 and was present over 30 years later in the UK.”
- Global forecasts of urban expansion to 2030 and direct impacts on biodiversity and carbon pools. Urban area to triple, affecting important biodiversity hotspots. Biggest surprise to me was Turkey. Gotta be a lot of CWRs there that are going to be threatened by urbanization. But I guess this is good news for urban agriculture?
- Seed Governance at the Intersection of Multiple Global and Nation-State Priorities: Modernizing Seeds in Turkey. Developing countries are opting for laws that favor commercialization and privatization because they’re buying into the currently dominant paradigm of what agricultural development means. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t. And if my aunt had wheels she’d be a bus.
- DNA Damage in Plant Herbarium Tissue. There isn’t enough of it to matter.
- Systematic review and meta-analysis of school-based interventions to improve daily fruit and vegetable intake in children aged 5 to 12 y. Fruit yes, veggies no.
- Use of cereal bars with quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa W.) to reduce risk factors related to cardiovascular diseases. Only 22 young(ish) subjects, but promising.
- The Genomic Signature of Crop-Wild Introgression in Maize. The wild relative has helped the cultigen to adapt to highland Mexico.
Nibbles: Polyploidy study, Agrobiodiversity policy, Organic livestock, Innovation, Buffett on small farms
- $2 million to study strawberries sounds like quite a lot, but then it is to investigate polyploidy in general.
- Agroforesters hear about IPR and agrobiodiversity. Probably not for the first, or last, time.
- Let’s not forget that even animal husbandry can be organic.
- “A lack of evidence to convince policymakers holds back progress on grassroots innovation in agriculture.” Weird; doesn’t seem to hold them back on anything else.
- What Howard G. Buffett knows about small farms. Campaign for Real Farming has made his words available.