History

May 30, 2016May 30, 2016

Happy birthday, Nazareno Strampelli

Please everyone run on over to Jeremy’s Eat This Podcast and listen to his masterly appreciation of the life and career of legendary Italian wheat breeder Nazareno Strampelli, The True Father of the First Green Revolution, on the 150th anniversary of his birthday.

Nazareno Strampelli, an Italian plant breeder, exactly foreshadowed Borlaug’s work by about four decades. His wheats doubled production in Italy and beyond and were crucial to the second green revolution ushered in by Borlaug. He was born on 29 May 1866, 150 years ago as I write this. He deserves to be better known (as do all plant breeders, actually).

May 19, 2016May 19, 2016

Nibbles: Botanical gardens, Glass flowers, Remarkable trees, Rhubarb history, Expensive pumpkin, Back to the future, Quinoa glut, Citrus greening biocontrol

All of BGCI’s ex situ surveys on one cool page. Have they re-modelled their website?
Harvard’s glass flowers are totally cool.
The world’s coolest trees.
Rhubarb is cooler than you think.
I’m not sure paying over a thousand pounds for a pumpkin seed is all that cool.
Conventional breeding is cooler than genetic engineering. Cool quote of the week: “I tell my students they should drop acid before they go to the field, and just look at the plants and let them tell you what they are doing.”
Is the coolness over for quinoa? Jeremy unavailable for comment.
Cool Pakistani bug may help with citrus greening in the US. But don’t stop looking for resistance, y’all.

May 18, 2016May 18, 2016

Nibbles: GRIN-Global, Old gardens, Grain buildings, Roman eating, Armenian wine, Coffee GI, PAPGREN, Tamar Haspel double

How to look for stuff in Chile’s genebank.
How colonial Americans gardened. And later built stuff out of produce.
How Romans ate.
How Armenians are (still) making wine.
How to figure out where your coffee comes from.
How the Pacific is saving its crop diversity.
How organic agriculture delivers benefits, and how it does not.
How GMOs deliver benefits, and how they do not. By the same person as the above.

May 11, 2016

Nibbles: Fixing food, Diane Medal, Iraq Edens, Camel genetics, Disappearing horses

UNEP video on why we have to change the food system.
Garden Club of America honors breadfruit guru Diane Ragone.
Paradise spared. In Iraq.
No such thing as an isolated dromedary, DNA says.
Horses in Kazakhstan, on the other hand…

May 10, 2016

Nibbles: Banning bars, New genomes, Pepper revolution, Participatory breeding, Organic mead, Paying for breeds, Punica breeding, Cyperus in Egypt, Adansonia in Uganda, Cyclone trees

“Friends don’t let friends make bar plots.” Of course they don’t.
Friend also don’t let friends hype the carrot and cassava genomes.
“The food of the true revolutionary is the red pepper. And he who cannot endure red peppers is also unable to fight:”  chili con China.
Salvatore Ceccarelli, who should know, on the centrality of seed. And the guys from Experimental Farm Network would agree.
Yes, you can now have organic tej.
“In theory…the undoubted value of these natural treasures should be reflected in their price, which should rise steeply as they become scarcer… In practice, natural assets are often hard to price well, if at all.”
A “Himalayan solution” for pomegranate breeding.
Nutsedge definitely needs a new name.
First formal record of the baobab in Uganda.
Wind-resistant tree germplasm for the Pacific. Much needed.