History

October 17, 2006October 17, 2006

What would early farmers do?

AlphaGalileo, the self-styled “world’s leading resource for European research news” has a piece on an experiment to reconstruct early Neolithic living conditions in Austria. But what varieties are they going to grow?

1. Sir Nathaniel Bacon’s painting records the arrival of American crops in early modern England. And the cookmaid gets equal billing.
2. North America’s bison survived near-extinction, but how much of its genetic diversity is left? Historic DNA is helping reconstruct what was lost, with implications for how what remains is conserved and managed.
3. China’s wild rice collection in Hainan now holds more than 15,000 samples. A genetic treasure trove, but its value ultimately depends on what breeders can make of it. Much like what’s left of bison diversity.
4. Mycorrhizal fungi form vast underground networks that support plant life and store carbon. A new global map begins to show their extent, and just how much of this biodiversity remains overlooked.
5. Africa’s herbaria hold centuries of botanical history, much of it still effectively invisible. Specimens can reveal shifting plant distributions and overlooked species. First, though, someone has to do the painstaking work of getting the data online.
6. Africa has done painstaking work on seed laws, but getting good seed into farmers’ hands remains. The gap between policy and delivery is stark, and commercial companies need to work alongside farmer-managed seed systems, not pretend they don’t exist.
Published on October 14, 2026