- How can you do Eggplant’s Rich History and not wonder why this generally huge, generally purple thing is called an eggplant?
- Domestication of the Gray Ghost Organ Pipe cactus; exceedingly complex. Oh and there’s a cool photo here.
- How berries protect the brain from age-related malfunction. Are you listening, Dmitry?
- Protect medicinal plants, says letter-writer.
- The world doesn’t understand drought tolerance, says another letter-writer.
- Agrobiodiversity in Mesoamerica conference.
- Chaffey’s Plant Cuttings from Annals of Botany. Must-read stuff.
- A wild relative contributes trait for early morning flowering to rice, allowing it to escape sterility induced by high temperatures.
- The Cornelian Cherry and the Baobab explained.
- Voice of America devotes Special English report to Pavlovsk. If that ain’t viral, what is?
- Genebanks on a roll in China. In Australia, not so much.
- Dam dataset online. Let the mashups proliferate.
Nibbles: Agretti, Pavlovsk, Nutrition, Turkeys
- The Ethicurean digs into agretti (Salsola soda).
- Pavlovsk in the St Petersburg Times …
- … and in the Sydney Morning Herald.
- Conference in November: Nutrition Security in the Developing World ABD?.
- CIAT’s library showcases nutrition.
- More on turkey domestication.
Nibbles: Bent, Rice, Cheez, Pavlovsk, Millennium Seed Bank, Livestock, EUCARPIA
- Fine memoir of Sir Bent Skovmand. Thanks Dag.
- Rice yields falling — and not just in experimental stations. The paper.
- In all the eulogies to the inventor of the Cheez Doodle, a note of truth.
- You could buy the Pavlovsk genebank site for just USD3.3 million, it says here. Is that even doable?
- Meanwhile, over in England, Researchers Rush to Fill Noah’s Ark Seed Bank While Politicians Bicker.
- Meanwhile, in Australia, worries about declines in livestock diversity.
- EUCARPIA’s meetings calendar. Handy.
Nibbles: Deregulation, Grapes, Bananas
- As with beer, so with beef. Gary argues for deregulation.
- Bring grapevines back to England, as ornamentals for the time being.
- Bacteria boost banana productivity.
Farming and schoolchildren
I had really hoped to find something strikingly modern in a pamphlet linked by Marion Nestle, so that I could challenge you all to guess when it was written. Alas, it is too steeped in the language and context of its time. In 1917 John Dewey, the noted psychologist, educator and general all-around thinker, was urging the schools of America to encourage pupils to garden.
There will be better results from training drills with the spade and the hoe than from parading America’s youngsters up and down the school yard. 1
He adduces many convincing arguments which could, with a minor rewrite, be deployed today. Indeed, Nestle makes the connection between child nutrition bills “languishing in [the US] Congress” and Dewey’s exhortations. My question is: did they work then? A quick search reveals that Dewey’s ideas about experiential learning influenced at least a few current school gardens. However, there’s no easily-unearthed evidence that American schools took up farming and garden in 1917-18. Now if only Dewey had had an impact pathway.