History

May 15, 2015May 15, 2015

Palmyra’s grapes

Remember our discussion of Ruoppolo’s grapes? You know, the ones with the weirdly shaped berries and the confused synonymy? Well, something looking remarkably similar has just turned up in a tweet featuring a photo of a carving from Palmyra, a UNESCO World Heritage Site under threat in Syria.

The grapes of wrath – beautiful stone carving in #Palmyra #Syria – @UNESCO World Heritage Site under threat pic.twitter.com/Nnaq6lFtHO

— Matthew Ward Hunter (@HistoryNeedsYou) May 15, 2015

Strangely-shaped grapes obviously go back a long way.

May 15, 2015

Nibbles: Bees, Oysters, Herbals, Svalbard

US honeybees really in trouble.
Europeans also worried.
Chesapeake oyster, on the other hand, are recovering.
Series of posts on old herbals.
Q&A on Svalbard Global Seed Vault.

May 14, 2015

Nibbles: Maps, Carrot museum, Soybean breeding, Spinach cure, Threshing machines, Ag from space, Sustainably Irish, Truffles trifle

Gorgeous old-timey map of medicinal plants in the US.
But maps don’t have to be full of stuff like that to be useful. And beautiful.
Have we linked to the Carrot Museum yet?
Perennial wild soybean from Australia good for something after all.
Sick citrus plants told to eat their spinach.
Thresh with style.
Agricultural expansion in Latin America slows down.
Irish eyes smiling on sustainability.
Global history of truffles book review.

May 13, 2015May 13, 2015

Nibbles: Youthful ideas, IK, Variety testing, GMO philosophy, Organic GMOs, Oline disease, Cacao doctors, US wheat, Cary Fowler, Bison renaissance, UCDavis, Andean grains, Alaskan ag, Lettuce latex, Collecting strategies, Pulses racing, Huitlacoche, Ecoagriculture, Bowel movement

Australian yoofs make suggestions for a better agriculture. Not as bad as you might think.
Emulate, don’t imitate, desert dwellers.
Webinar on variety trialing.
A philosopher tackles GMO labelling. Not many people hurt.
Meanwhile, Pamela Ronald is trying to find a middle way.
This Italian olive disease thing is getting worrying.
Indonesians have their own problems with cacao, but at least they seem to be fixing them.
And the US is gonna have trouble with wheat. The solution: plant maize? No, wait…
The European bison is back!
A decade of Plant Sciences at UCDavis.
Call for more breeding of Andean grains. By an Andean grain breeder.
“It might not be the Fertile Crescent when it comes to corn and potatoes, but south-central Alaska just might be the cradle of the coming Rhodiola renaissance.”
Rubbery lettuce? Shhh, or everybody will want some.
Can’t collect seed at random throughtout a population? Collect more!
Yeah, yeah, it’s the International Year of Pulses, we get it.
The Mexican truffle?
Ecofarming pays. In Kenya. In 2014.
Sometimes crop wild relatives are a real pain in the ass.

May 12, 2015May 11, 2015

Nibbles: Biofortification, NUS, Wakehurst Place, Cheesy map, Seeds2Zim, Food bibliography, Eucalypt genome, Oregano in the US, CFC, Rotations, Malaria drugs, Quinoa in Colorado, Pacific pineapple, Rhubarb event, Mango festival, Araucaria, American chestnut, Potato casserole, Coffee breeding, Tulips galore, George Harrison Shull, Seed saving, Chinese agriculture, European agroforestry, Eat This Podcast

Webinar on biofortification, today.
Book on Asian underutilized plant species, which we somehow missed when it came out in 2014. Unless it didn’t.
The Millennium Seed Bank isn’t just great in and of itself, it also sits in a wonderful garden: the man who has been keeping that going for the past decade has just retired. Best wishes!
A map of French cheese. Internet surrenders.
North Jersey donates organic seeds to Zimbabwe. In related news, they also sending coals to Newcastle.
Online bibliography of food history. There goes the morning.
All hail the eucalyptuzzzzz genome.
The unintended consequences of WW2: oregano.
Follow the construction of the Crops for the Future Centre HQ. Over 10 episodes, mind, so gird your loins.
Breaking down crop rotation.
Malaria drugs through the ages. Make mine a G&T.
Yes, how is quinoa doing in Colorado?
New pineapples for the Pacific. They’ll probably end up canned.
Good news: Clumber Park has a Rhubarb Weekend. Bad news: we missed it. Ditto the Goa Mango Festival.
Mapping every monkey puzzle tree in Britain. Well, someone has to.
Transgenic chestnuts taking over New York State. You can bet someone’s going to map them.
The US potato renaissance we all knew was happening finally hits the headlines.
The latest on coffee improvement, including news from the CATIE collections.
Tulipmania: The video.
The father of hybrid corn.
Would he have approved of saving seeds? I suspect yes.
Chinese agriculture adds a few (thousand) years.
Europe has agroforestry too, and lots of it.
Think I missed something? Check if Jeremy caught it in his Tasty Morsels.