- Fiji looking for better sugarcane. Not a moment too soon, with the EU subsidies going and all.
- Collecting the very valuable caterpillar mushroom in China’s protected areas. Illegal, but whachagonnado?
- The honeybees of the Saharan oases are isolated. Well, actually, not all of them, which I guess qualifies as a surprise.
- Can you tell different vodka brands apart? Here’s why. Maybe. Sounds a bit flaky to me.
- A global review of cotton genetic resources.
- Ploughing up the African savannah is gonna solve all our problems, apparently.
- Organic Seed Alliance launches a youtube channel. Oh goody, there’s how to breed organic carrots!
Society for Economic Botany discussing agrobiodiversity as we speak
Coming across this write-up of a year-old symposium on Mexico’s wild and cultivated greens reminded me that this year’s congress of the Society for Economic Botany is going on right now in Xalapa, Mexico. The theme is “Agrobiodiversity, lessons for conservation and local development.” If you’re there (and we know you are) and would like to report on the meeting for us (and we know you do), just drop us a line.
Ancient candy bars waiting to be rediscovered
It was something of a throw-away comment in the paper on the Kibale protected area in Uganda which I blogged about recently:
Tribes knew of coffee’s stimulant properties and mixed crushed coffee beans with animal fat to create “iron rations” used by warriors and travelers on long journeys (McCoy & Walker 1991). ((McCoy, E., and J. F. Walker. 1991. Coffee and tea. 3rd edition. Raines & Raines, New York.)) In the KNP region, coffee beans were used in blood rituals and in the ceremonies of Toro kings.
It piqued my interest, but I did nothing about it. But then, as often happens, I came across a slew of similar things, such as this write-up for a “new” kind of candy bar. And then a reference in a discussion about how cacao was consumed by the Maya:
Sometimes the Maya mixed the cacao with cornmeal to create a tightly packed material, almost like a hockey puck, that was more transportable. That’s how they stored it. There are texts that say it ended up being stolen by enemies since it was very highly valued. It was also taken by the warriors when they went to their next job, if you will. When they were on the go, they’d just take these things out of their pockets and eat some. They were like early energy bars!
Now there’s a topic for someone’s dissertation. Are there also examples of ancient energy bars using tea, qat, or coca, for example?
Nibbles: Eggplant history, Weaver heirlooms, Emu farming, India’s cropland, Togo maize storage
- Where does the eggplant come from? Where is it going?
- William Woys Weaver and his heirloom seed collection.
- Orissa farmers try emus. In desperation, presumably.
- India runs out of cropland.
- Tweaking Togo’s traditional grain storage structures.
Nibbles: Ecosystem vulnerability, Mayan chocolate, Natural dyes, Japanese art
- Climate change affecting ecosystems. Well I never. Mashup with crop wild relative distributions needed!
- Hershey scientist studies ancient chocolate.
- Natural dyes in Indonesia. Temptation to pun successfully resisted for once.
- Agrobiodiversity in art: The Old Plum.