- I need a drink.
- Or maybe some Viking ganja.
- I know I don’t need a VegiBee. But maybe you do.
- I guess we all need to write to the EU about the new seed law.
- Nobody needs another discussion of whether cloning is good or bad.
Nibbles: African food, Cattle grazing, Young farmers, Seed policy, Traditional medicine, Litchis, Land use, Perennial sorghum
- Today’s Nibbles is a Kenya edition. Just because.
- But we’ll start with an African foodie revolution that is passing that country by.
- Cattle need diverse foods too, so don’t neglect those forbs, Kenyans.
- A young Kenyan turns to vegetable growing. Not, alas, of the traditional kind. Yet.
- Well, he better get a move on, because it says here people are after his seeds.
- Seeds are what the traditional medicine industry could do with.
- I guess there’s always litchis.
- Wonder what they’ll do to land use patterns.
- But will there ever be perennial sorghum?
The history of national flower collections in the UK
A Facebook post by Plant Heritage earlier today pointed me to a news item on their website to the effect that collections of Monarda and Nepeta have been added to its nation-wide programme of National Plant Collections.
The Collections based near Okehampton, Devon, have been put together by Fi Reddaway in her two acre garden on the edge of Dartmoor. She has used the development of the Collections to help her rehabilitate from ME diagnosed in 2004.
Good news in its own right, for various different reasons. But it also reminded me, coming so hot on the heels of yesterday’s post about UK genebanks, of an intriguingly similar reference I’d run across a few weeks ago on the website of the Cambridge University Botanic Garden:
Our National Collection of Tulipa (species only) is believed to be the only surviving collection in the country recognised under the Ministry of Agriculture’s special collection scheme that was introduced after the Second World War. The origins of the collection, however, go back much further and lie in a tragedy. William Dykes, master of Charterhouse School, keen amateur gardener and botanist, and Secretary of the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), was a passionate collector of two bulbous genera, Tulipa and Iris. Sadly, in November 1925, only a week after receiving the Victoria Medal of Honour from the RHS, Dykes was killed in a motoring accident.
A sad story indeed, but what is this “Ministry of Agriculture … special collection scheme that was introduced after the Second World War”? I tweeted the reference to Prof. Brian Ford-Lloyd, who might be expected to know about plant genetic resources matters in the UK, and he had not heard of any such scheme, but pointed me in the general direction of the National Archives website.
Bingo! Or at least maybe. Because a little searching soon resulted in a reference to the document “National Species Collections of Flowers: grant to Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew“, dated 1948-1957. Now, I don’t have access to the document in question, so I’m not sure if this “National Species Collections of Flowers” thing is the same as the CU Botanic Garden’s “Ministry of Agriculture … special collection scheme” or indeed Plant Heritage’s “National Plant Collections” programme. Maybe someone out there can clarify the matter. And maybe even tell us if that tulip collection is indeed the last of its ilk.
In the meantime, I choose to marvel at the fact that in a post-war Britain beleaguered by rationing and grappling with all sorts of social problems, the Ministry of Agriculture supported the setting up of a National Species Collections of Flowers.
Brainfood: Viruses, Allium genomic size, Acacia adaptation, Local carp, Chinese onions, Bull genetic info, Ecosystem services, Sahelian ag
- New threats to endangered Cook’s scurvy grass (Lepidium oleraceum; Brassicaceae): introduced crop viruses and the extent of their spread. Introduced crop virus threatens endemic.
- Role of adaptive and non-adaptive mechanisms forming complex patterns of genome size variation in six cytotypes of polyploid Allium oleraceum (Amaryllidaceae) on a continental scale. It’s not the environment.
- Evolution and ecology meet molecular genetics: adaptive phenotypic plasticity in two isolated Negev desert populations of Acacia raddiana at either end of a rainfall gradient. It’s the environment.
- Using biodiversity to valorise local food products: the case of fish ponds in a cultural landscape, their biodiversity, and carp production. It could work, if only people liked to eat carp and knew what biodiversity was.
- Phenotype and genetic diversity in potato onion cultivars from three provinces of northeast China. In other news, there’s something called a potato onion. Otherwise, this is actually a deeply boring paper.
- The value of genetic information to livestock buyers: a combined revealed, stated preference approach. Low to none, for now.
- Ecosystem Services. Latest issue includes a bunch of interesting reviews, and an editorial summarizing each in like a paragraph. Great service, great value. See what I did there?
- Scientific documentation of crop land changes in the Sahel: A half empty box of knowledge to support policy? There is no data, not really.
Nibbles: Vietnamese rice, Intensified rice, Photographed rice, No rice, Rice and beans, Ecosystem services
- Vietnamese rice varieties get sequenced. What will IRRI think?
- Well, they may be too busy cosying up to SRI to respond.
- A rice farmer does feature in a nice Christensen Fund slideshow.
- But no rice in these 12th century recipes.
- You know what goes well with rice? Beans, that’s what.
- And now, for something completely different: Ecosystem Service Valuation Toolkit.