- India to patent tribal medicinal knowledge. Community biodiversity register of medicinal plants, apparently with scientific backup.
- Scientific American Blogs devote the day to food — which includes agriculture.
- Language Log investigates leek turnovers. And you thought we were OCD?
Starch-free potatoes to be protected
Malwi potatoes are significant because they contain negligible quantities of starch…
Wow, that would certainly be worth a Geographic Indication now, wouldn’t it? In fact, I’m reliably informed that what is happening is that potatoes grown in Malwa are high in starch because of the relatively hot temperatures there compared to other potato-growing regions of India. That makes them great for processing, whereas the same varieties grown elsewhere are apparently not suitable for this. Whether that makes Malwi potatoes eligible for GI is at best debatable, I would have said. But I’d be interested to hear from the experts.
Nibbles: Seed savers, Lemons, Assam Rice, Striga control, Amaranth, Bearded pigs, Banana, Early nutrition
- Seed savers: everyone’s got an angle, from Seeds of Hope and Change to Seed Bank Bingo.
- Italian lemons enjoying a renaissance. In California, natch.
- India registers Assam farmers’ traditional rice varieties. In other news, rice water “is also used as shampoo, according to community elders”.
- US$9 million to “implement and evaluate four approaches” to controlling Striga in Africa. One day we’ll know.
- Denver Botanic Gardens does amaranth.
- Evolution of bearded pigs. Good to know. Good to eat?
- Bioversity banana team guest blogs at Annals of Botany. But surely they have a blog of their own. No, wait…
- Agriculture is bad for your health.
Protecting Chinese agricultural biodiversity products
So, in retaliation for Europe protecting Roquefort, Stilton cheese and Scottish farmed salmon (sic.), among other agrobiodiversity products, the Chinese have slapped Protected Denominations of Origin (PDO) on Guanxi honey pomelos, Shaanxi apples and Longjing tea and a Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) on Liaxian Mashan yams. ((Sorry, Google doesn’t know anything about these delectable-sounding yams. Which I am willing to bet are sweet potatoes.)) Well, no, not really, it was all much more amicable than that. And Dongshan asparagus, Jinxiang garlic, Pinggu peach, Yancheng crayfish and Zhenjiang vinegar are waiting in the wings…
Nibbles: CWR, ICRISAT, Fruits, Maize, Symbionts, Tissue culture, Vegetables, Med diet
- ICARDA saves the world.
- No, ICRISAT saves the world.
- You’re both wrong, it’s CIAT.
- No, wait, maybe it’s CIMMYT. Oh I give up.
- Actually it’s fungi.
- Or maybe tissue culture?
- Surely it can’t be five unknown vegetables?
- Could it be that it’s the Mediterranean diet? And that UNESCO will screw it up for all of us?