History

November 18, 2011November 18, 2011

Tracing Arcadian wheat

One of those varieties is Arcadian, which was grown in New York State as recently as the 1920s; it had gone so thoroughly out of fashion that when officials from the U.S. Department of Agriculture sought it for their seed bank in 1991, they had to get it from Russia. (And even that, he says, may not be identical to the New York strain.)

Well of course I’ve needed much less encouragement than that provided by this snippet from a Smithsonian Magazine piece on artisanal wheats in the US to don the fireproof suit and venture into Genebank Database Hell. Especially with Eurisco launching a new website on the same day and all.

So here’s what I found out. The USDA National Small Grains Collection did indeed receive in Oct. 1991 the accession WIR 22038 from the N.I. Vavilov Research Institute of Plant Industry (VIR), being a sample of the wheat variety “Arcadian”, released in New York in 1895. It was given the number PI 565362 in 1993. There’s now a bunch of evaluation data on it in GRIN.

But where did VIR get it from? Well, Eurisco does have a record of a VIR100022038, ((Ah, ok, that doesn’t work, does it. You need to go back to the search page and insert the accession number VIR100022038.)) collected in 1928, country of origin the USA, but that’s about all. So was it collected by Vavilov himself? There’s nothing on the identity of the collector on VIR’s own online database. Vavilov visited the USA in 1921 and 1930, going to New York on the first occasion, but that seems too early compared to the VIR acquisition date of 1928. Maybe he sent a request for additional material to the contacts he had made? And with that I leave it to the Vavilov experts (or my next visit to St Petersburg) to continue following the trail…

November 18, 2011November 17, 2011

More on Pizzutello

Our post of a couple of days ago on Ruoppolo’s grapes found its way to an actual grape expert, Anna Schneider of the Istituto di Virologia Vegetale in Italy. I’ve translated her comments below:

I did some research on Ruoppolo and saw that he worked in Naples, so it is indeed possible that the grapes he represented are Pizzutello white, which is actually still grown in Tivoli together with Pergolese and still arrive in the markets of Rome.

On the difference between the painting and the image of the Dedo de dama of Portugal, which is synonymous with Pizzutello, I am not worried: the color obviously depends on environmental conditions, and also the elongation of the berry may be: a) an exaggeration of the artist (who usually tended to exaggerate the more unusual characters, b) intra-varietal diversity (often mostly present in some varieties), c) growing conditions in the absence of “forcing”.

Other synonyms of the same grape variety, which was one of the most popular table varieties in the Mediterranean basin, because of the shape of the berry, to the particular form of the berry, are Cornichon blanc (France), Corazon de cabrito and Teta de vaca in Spain.

These synonyms are the “official” ones; unofficial ones number in the hundreds are hundreds (Galletta, Uva corno, Cornicchiola, Lady finger, etc…)

As a final note, I have a Pizzutello look-alike I recovered in old vineyards that seems a distinct genotype. In fact, it is possible that there is more than one variety with such a berry (and called the same ), although this Pizzutello (Cornichon, Dedo de dama, etc..) Is probably the most widely cultivated both today and in the past and among the oldest documented varieties (perhaps the dactyli grape of Pliny? though as you know such correspondences can never be definitely proven…)

To find out more I would need to do a more thorough search in the literature and among molecular profiles, but for that I would need a little more time…

Many thanks to Anna for taking the time to provide more information than I would have ever have been able to get out of the databases.

November 17, 2011November 17, 2011

Nibbles: Gums & resins, ITPGRFA, Soy sauce, Med diet, Aquaculture, Cacao, Sugar industry, Nomenclature, Yam (Chinese), Urban agriculture

After yesterday’s thing on gum arabic, CIFOR’s blogger weighs in on frankincense and myrrh. Gums and resins renaissance, anyone?
VoA on the ITPGRFA, with interview goodness.
Soy sauce in bullet points.
A Spanish food historian’s deconstruction of the Mediterranean diet deconstructed by Rachel Laudan.
Fish in paddies: here comes the science.
Côte d’Ivoire to revive cacao cultivation. By building a research centre?
Pleasant, cultured and not so short foray into the history of the sugar industry in Kenya and Mauritius.
You say sweet potato. I say yam.
You say yam, so does Rhizowen, and yet … he’s talking about neither Ipomoea nor Manihot.
Urban agriculture thriving in DR Congo.

November 8, 2011November 8, 2011

Nibbles: Parthenium, Squashes

Parthenium hysterophorus is smothering Kenya. Somebody do something. And what’s that specific mean? Late-bearing?
Cucurbits and American history.
NordGen etc workshop on Socio-economic and Cultural Values of Farm Animal Breeds. And all the presentations are linked. But where are the stories?

November 7, 2011November 7, 2011

Brainfood: Kids and veggies, Common names, Markets, Barley genetic history, Inbreeding depression

Exclusive breastfeeding duration and later intake of vegetables in preschool children. More breastfeeding means more vegetables later on.
Common names of species, the curious case of Capra pyrenaica and the concomitant steps towards the ‘wild-to-domestic’ transformation of a flagship species and its vernacular names. Applying the common name of a domestic species to a wild one can cause problems. Yeah but how do you get across the importance of wild relatives otherwise?
Testing the central market hypothesis: a multivariate analysis of Tanzanian sorghum markets. Lots of fancy maths proves there are basically two sorghum markets in Tanzania. But what does that mean for diversity?
Evolutionary history of barley cultivation in Europe revealed by genetic analysis of extant landraces. Nine geographically-based populations, which go back to the early days of the spread of agriculture. Now, tell me someone, do they correspond with the human genetic data?
Genetic erosion impedes adaptive responses to stressful environments. Stress reduces variability, which reduces ability to respond to stress.

Don’t forget the open Mendeley group for the papers we link to here.