- Jeremy says: Put an artichoke in your tank!
- American boffins say: I know what, instead of making beer with it, let’s feed barley to fish.
- Ugandan fishermen say: Want a “boutique” fish?
- USDA says: “The nation’s organic farms and ranches have higher average sales and higher average production expenses than U.S. farms overall…”
- South African animal genetic resources experts say: Save our pigs!
- The Economist says (we paraphrase) war is good for biodiversity conservation … but where are the wild relatives?
- Right here, in the boreal north, and we need to conserve it, and the knowledge to use it, say Canadian conservationists.
- Rainfall, not temperature, was the trigger for C4 grasses say other American boffins.
- “It’s a sloppy use of language to equate vegetables and food,” says Rachel. We agree.
Nibbles: Sequencing, Agricultural origins, Mating systems, Tomato shelf-life, Beer vs Tea, Soy, Carrot, Seed processing, Screw-pine, Yams, Salicornia, Pollinators
- Second generation sequencing on the one hand. First generation methylation mapping on the other. What’s a poor bitechnologist to do?
- Site of the birth of MesoAmerican agriculture pinpointed.
- Meta-analysis says mating system does not affect magnitude of local adaptation. Ok, I really need to understand this one, because it’s kinda counter-intuitive..
- Boffins produce longer-lasting tomato. Which, however, still tastes like water. Those pesky biotechnologists are all over this.
- A tale of two brews. And here’s why I prefer beer. Well, one reason. Meanwhile, a hero probes how the amber nectar comes to be.
- Another slightly dubious use for soy. Aren’t you glad its genome has been sequenced? Thanks, Jacob.
- Evidence for cultivated carrot from medieval Poland. I’m sure this is REALLY important.
- CIMMYT video of seed processing.
- Pandanus photo for all my Pacific friends.
- Yams to have their day? I hope so, but we have been here before. Repeatedly.
- Salicornia the new hope for saline regions? I hope so, but we have been here before. Repeatedly.
- FAO manages wild biodiversity to manage pollinators.
What did the Nabateans grow?
You know how the internet is. Endless rabbit holes down which to lose oneself. Some questions answered. Others, not so much. New ones arise. Here’s an example. It all started with the Mosaic of the Seasons in the 5th century Byzantine church at Petra in Jordan. I visited the site last week and thought the agrobiodiversity-themed mosaics wonderful.
That got me thinking about Nabatean crops more generally. What did these people grow in the middle of the desert? Did it include the plants depicted in these mosaics? The Nabateans were known as spice (and incense) traders, but more as middlemen rather than actual producers. Why, indeed, did they find it necessary to grow anything at all in such a harsh environment? Couldn’t they have traded for everything they needed, sitting astride a major trade route from the East to Rome?
So I googled a bit, and it turns out there’s a book called Nabatean Agriculture. Or Al-Filahah al-Nabatiyah in fact, written by a 9th century Mesopotamian scholar called Ibn Wahshiyah. Unfortunately, though the Arabic text is online, I could not find anything that I could actually read on the contents of the book beyond that it includes “a wealth of knowledge on the preparation of basic foods from the agricultural products mentioned throughout the book.” Frustrating.
However, I did find an enormous amount on the sophisticated water management practices of the Nabateans, for example in the supporting document to Israel’s proposal for inscription of the “Desert Cities of the Negev” as a World Heritage Site. It’s a huge pdf, so watch out, but it does have great descriptions, starting on page 108, of the channels, damns and cisterns these communities built to save and manage water in a region with less that 100mm of annual rainfall. Some of these practices are in fact being revived. One consists of enigmatic piles of rocks called tuleilat el anab in Arabic, which means “grape mounds.” ((The photo is from that World Heritage Sites supporting document.))
They measure 1 m in diameter by 30 cm in height and in some places extend for several square kilometers. So it’s not just pleasure gardens we’re talking about. The prevailing view seems to be that the grape mounds were intended to enhance the flow of run-off water into agricultural terraces. Their name is the only clue to the crops grown by the Nabateans that I’ve been able to find ((Or does that refer to their appearance?)), apart maybe for those mosaics. There must surely be some archaeobotanical evidence somewhere? More rabbit holes beckon.
Podcast on food as history
Guests Tom Standage, business affairs editor of The Economist and author of An Edible History of Humanity joined Eric Tagliacozzo, associate professor of history at Cornell University and author of Secret Trades, Porous Borders: Smuggling and States Along a Southeast Asian Frontier and award-winning culinary expert Julie Sahni, author of Classic Indian Cooking to discuss food as a driving force behind economic expansion, industrial development and geopolitical competition.
And you can listen to the podcast, courtesy of the American Museum of Natural History.
Ancient foods get a blogger
Joanna Linsley-Poe is a “chef, artisan bread baker, ancient food historian, food archaeologist and anthropologist as well as a writer. Although that sounds like quite a mouthful, I guess it’s all about a love of history and food.” We can relate to that! Joanna started blogging at Ancientfoods in September last year. I’ve added her to our blogroll and subscribed to her RSS feed.