- The Czech national genetic resources programme in a nice brochure.
- Food Sovereignty: A Critical Dialogue, by Patrick Mulvany. Another nice brochure. Not entirely clear why it’s not included in the Journal of Peasant Studies special edition on the relevant conference.
- Forests can have Big Data too. Yes, it’s Global Forest Watch. And more from WRI, but it’s really all over the intertubes. No sign of the brochure. Yet.
- “So when I eat this [corn] I eat with all the energy of my history.” No brochures needed.
- Making agroforestry and agriculture in general attractive to yutes. Would a brochure help?
Nibbles: New potatoes, Wild species, Native maize, Conservation course, Indigenous fishery, Yield trends
- Wild relative rescues potatoes. Which wild relative? Well for that you’ll have to read the paper. The FAQ on that. Or if you want an alternative. More the better, I guess. And just to remember what makes it all possible: diversity in fields and genebanks.
- Wild species not just useful to food security as sources of genes, of course. And more.
- Indigenous peoples save corn.
- Maybe some of them would be interested in this MSc at Bangor.
- Indigenous peoples can catch — and save? — fish after all.
- So is there stagnation in yield increases or what? Lobell reviews book that says maybe not.
Let there always be Pane Nero di Castelvetrano
It all started with a photo of “tumminia bread” on Instagram. It looked yummie, but I’d never heard of tumminia. A picturesque hamlet? A time-honoured though back-breaking mode of preparation? Some ancient grain hanging on precariously on the outskirts of encroaching modernity? A treasured local variety of wheat nurtured by gnarled rustics? I had to know. A little googling revealed that the name refers to an ingredient in the Pane Nero di Castelvetrano, a dark bread made in a small town in the Sicilian province of Trapani.
The bread is made using a leaven system. The flour mix is 80% local and refined semolina durum, described as “blonde grain”. I believe this will be the equivalent grind to “rimacinata”, if I’m not wrong. The other 20% of the flour is from the tumminia durum wheat grain, which is milled quite coarsely, and is a wholegrain flour.
So the next job was to hunt down in genebanks that treasured local variety of durum. Because how long will it continue to be nurtured by gnarled Sicilian rustics in the picturesque hamlet of Castelvetrano, out there on the outskirts of modernity? Thankfully, Genesys says that there are two accessions of tumminia at ICARDA and another two at IPK. They’re not duplicates, I don’t think, the former having been collected in 1973 and the latter in 1985. They all come from Sicily, but the ICARDA accessions from near Aragona, some 100 km southeast of Castelvetrano along the coast, and the IPK accessions from Bisacquino, which is a bit closer, about 60 km east, in the mountains. So several picturesque hamlets are involved, or at least that was the case 30-40 years ago.
Anyway, if you go to the European Wheat Database you get a little bit of additional information, but unfortunately I can’t link to it, so I’ll have to hand-hold you through it. See that thing that says “single search” down the left-hand side? Click on it, and where is says accession name, type tumminia to get to the IPK accessions; now click on either accession number. You’ll get to the passport information on our Sicilian durum accession. Scroll down and on the right-hand side you’ll see a button marked “Link to pedigree catalogue.” If you click on that you’ll land on the entry for tumminia in Zeven’s Genealogies of 14000 wheat varieties, published in 1976. Which says that it is a Spanish landrace. 1 Awkward. Maybe the gnarled rustics that originally nurtured tumminia are in altogether a different picturesque hamlet, in a different country? Or maybe Zeven was wrong.
Be that as it may, I think we can rest assured that, genetically speaking at least, the key ingredient of Pane Nero di Castelvetrano is probably pretty safe. Even if fewer picturesque hamlets grow tumminia nowadays than formerly, and for all I know the opposite is true, there are those 4 accessions to fall back on, in two separate genebanks, plus safety duplications, and probably even Svalbard. Now to make sure that back-breaking mode of preparation is likewise safe from encroaching modernity.
Nibbles: Variety adoption data, Georgian biodiversity, Species migration, Agroforestry shindig, Perennial breeding, Pacific history, Livestock emissions, Dandelion rubber
- New database on the adoption of modern varieties. No doubt will eventually include the ones coming out of this shiny new rice regional hub in Burundi.
- Useful summary of what’s happening in agricultural biodiversity in Georgia. No mention of ITPGRFA ratification, alas. You can find previous editions of the newsletter of the CGIAR Regional Program for Sustainable Agricultural Development in Central Asia and the Caucasus here.
- CSIRO come up with map of where and how fast species will move due to climate change.
- And Google Earth now has the underlying climate data you need to do that kind of analysis.
- World Congress on Agroforestry off the ground. You can follow on Twitter, #WCA2014. Also, you can read the blog. Do you remember when this type of thing didn’t even have an RSS feed?
- Did we miss this thing of perennial grain breeding at the Land Institute when it came out a year ago?
- Nice long podcast and Q&A from the Bishop Museum on the footprint Hawaiians left on their islands before contact. Great stuff on GIS analysis of suitability of ancient landscapes for taro and sweet potato. And, coincidentally, an equally long video clip on Pacific island landscapes more generally, and how they shaped the culture (and agriculture) of the Polynesians.
- ILRI DG chides The Economist on article suggesting that the only way to decrease livestock emissions is to go industrial: “There simply is no moral equivalent between those making poor food choices and those with no food choices at all.”
- New EU project on Russian dandelion does not seem to include boffins who recently turned off the rapid polymerization gene. And will they use the right species? And do some ex situ conservation? I’m not holding my breath on that last one.
Brainfood: Cucumber diversity, Micronutrients in Africa, Natural enemies, Ag expansion, Food security & trade, Chinese forages, Frafra potato, Rayada rice, Persea agroforestry, European oats, Agrobiodiversity & health
- A genomic variation map provides insights into the genetic basis of cucumber domestication and diversity. Four geographic groups, bottleneck not too bad. Opportunity for breeding for better nutritional value. But I suspect that’s a low bar.
- Dietary mineral supplies in Africa. Zn seems to be the lowest hanging fruit, as it were. I wonder if above’s super-cucumbers would help.
- Mechanisms for flowering plants to benefit arthropod natural enemies of insect pests: Prospects for enhanced use in agriculture. If you chose the right plants to plant, you can boost biological control of insect pests on farms.
- Agricultural expansion and its impacts on tropical nature. Roads will lead to increased conversion of natural ecosystems to agriculture in South America and Sub-Saharan Africa. Sustainable intensification is the answer.
- From Food Insufficiency towards Trade Dependency: A Historical Analysis of Global Food Availability. If most of us have more food now, it’s because of trade.
- Technical challenges in evaluating southern China’s forage germplasm resources. Nothing they can’t handle, clearly.
- Sustaining Frafra potato (Solenostemon rotundifolius Poir.) in the food chain; current opportunities in Ghana. Better varieties and processing. Where have I heard that before? Oh yeah, in every single paper on neglected crops.
- Rayada specialty: the forgotten resource of elite features of rice. It’s a weird variant of deepwater rice from Bangladesh with possible enhanced stress tolerance due to longer root system.
- Persea schiedeana: A High Oil “Cinderella Species” Fruit with Potential for Tropical Agroforestry Systems. Superior genotypes of this neglected avocado relative identified in fairs in Mexican region, and targeted for vegetative propagation and participatory breeding.
- Quality characteristics of European avena genetic resources collections. The modern varieties are better, but that doesn’t mean the old ones are useless.
- Nutrient Intake, Morbidity and Nutritional Status of Preschool Children are Influenced by Agricultural and Dietary Diversity in Western Kenya. Low food variety is associated with stunting. Kinda sorta.