- iSPOT to map common names to Latin names. Jeremy says “Good luck with that.”
- International Conference on Biodiversity Informatics. Jeremy says “Good luck with that too.”
- Online discussion forums for the ICBI, above. Agriculture! Forestry! Fisheries!
- Uganda joins the rush to Svalbard global genebank.
- Scientists to clone pashmina goat. Er … why?
- Adopt-an-Italian-olive-tree.
- International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC) meets so we can eats.
- Inverted root grafting of canistel at the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden.
- In vino veritas.
The spread of the ass
Great find by Mathilda: “The history and spread of donkeys in Africa,” by Roger Blench. It’s from the book Donkeys, people and development, edited by Paul Starkey and Denis Fielding. That came out of a 2004 Animal Traction Network for Eastern and Southern Africa workshop. There’s lots of other interesting stuff on the network’s site, including a donkey bibliography.
In brief:
- domesticated probably in Egypt/Nubia at the beginning of the Neolithic in Africa, 6,500 years ago
- but perhaps several times in regions of its former range no longer represented by its present-day distribution
- expansion paralleled that of cultivated sorghum
LATER: And a thousand year later, on another continent, it’s the horse’s turn.
Wallacean agrobiodiversity overlooked?
There was an International Conference on Alfred Russel Wallace and the Wallacea in Makassar last December. Wallacea is of course one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots, a link between the Sahul and Sunda landmasses. I was only able to find a sketchy programme on the internet, so I don’t really know in detail what was covered. In particular, was agricultural biodiversity included in the discussions? There have been fleeting mentions of “Long-term biodiversity monitoring including that of the Anoa dwarf buffalos on Buton (Phillip Wheeler, University of Hull)” as one of the papers. ((Why was this thing never domesticated?)) But what about spices, for example? Does anyone know?
Incidentally, while looking into this I came across some great pictures of the house where Wallace lived on Ternate. Another site to add to the list for our long-planned tour of the Spice Islands, Robert?
Millennial beans
Nice enough beans, ((And thanks to Bisse for letting me use her flickr pic.)) but is the story circulating about them really true?
The story of Anasazi beans varies, depending on who is telling it. In popular mythology, the beans were uncovered by an anthropologist, who discovered a 1,500 year old tightly sealed jar of the beans at a dig in New Mexico. Some of the beans germinated, and the new variety of bean entered cultivation again.
I tried to track the story down, and the closest I got to paydirt, I think, was a passage in Beans: A History by Ken Albala. But even that is pretty vague really. Archaeologists from UCLA somewhere in the midwest in the 1980s, or maybe 1950s, uncover a clay pot sealed with pine tar which they carbon date to 500 BCE. Some of the beans sprout and an intrepid businessman markets them. Yeah, right. To go back to the source of the previous quote:
Since most botanists agree that most beans are unable to germinate after approximately 50 years, it is more probable that the beans remained in constant cultivation in the Southwest, probably in Native American gardens, and that they were picked up by companies looking for new “boutique beans.”
There are plenty of companies marketing Anasazi beans now. But actually it is not impossible for legume seeds to keep their viability for more than 50 years — that’s what genebanks are for. And the dry, relatively cool conditions of an Arizona cave might just be good enough to ensure the survival of a few beans for centuries.
Nibbles: Berries, Women, Marsh Arabs, Maple, Sorghum, Nuts, Conference, Banana
- Let the berry wars commence. Thanks to Hannes for taking sides.
- Women active in African agriculture. Well I never.
- Iraq’s marshes in trouble again. This time it’s drought.
- Gorosoe in Korea: “…it soothes my stomach after a hangover.”
- Vavilov set right on sorghum in China.
- Protected pine forest threatened by logging in Russia. Nuts!
- 1st International IFOAM Conference on Organic Animal and Plant Breeding.
- International Banana Symposium: Global Perspectives on Asian Challenges.