- The Museum of Cider has an exhibition on “A Variety of Cultures.”
- Nice podcast rounding up the latest on dog domestication.
- Useful summary of the history of rye in the Nordic countries since it replaced barley in the Medieval period.
- They didn’t give up barley in the Outer Hebrides.
- The Tunisian farmer goes back to wheat landraces (I think).
- The Kenyan farmers who want to exchange landraces.
- El Colombiano visits Future Seeds, evokes The Walking Dead.
- Seed saving resources from the California Seed Bank and the herbarium at the University of California, Berkeley.
Brainfood: Archaeology edition
- Early human selection of crops’ wild progenitors explains the acquisitive physiology of modern cultivars. The high leaf nitrogen, photosynthesis, conductance and transpiration of crops was already there in their wild relatives, the first farmers just happened to domesticate greedy plants.
- The impact of farming on prehistoric culinary practices throughout Northern Europe. When the first farmers arrived in northern Europe armed with their greedy plants, they learned a lot about food from the local hunter-fisher-gatherers, and vice-versa, but without much interbreeding. Jeremy interviews one of the authors on his podcast.
- Early contact between late farming and pastoralist societies in southeastern Europe. There was extensive interbreeding between farmers and the local transitional foragers/herders before with the expansion of pastoralist groups into Europe from the Eurasian steppes around 3300 BC.
- Isotopes prove advanced, integral crop production, and stockbreeding strategies nourished Trypillia mega-populations. The earliest European mega-settlements, in Ukraine and Moldova, from around 4000 BCE, integrated greedy crops and generous domesticated livestock.
- Inference of Admixture Origins in Indigenous African Cattle. Following introduction from the Near East, domesticated cattle got admixed with a North African extinct aurochs before spreading throughout Africa.
- Flax for seed or fibre use? Flax capsules from ancient Egyptian sites (3rd millennium BC to second century AD) compared with modern flax genebank accessions. Fibre first.
- Revealing the secrets of a 2900-year-old clay brick, discovering a time capsule of ancient DNA. DNA from 34 plant groups were detected inside an old brick when it happened to break.
- Making wine in earthenware vessels: a comparative approach to Roman vinification. Comparison with modern counterparts shows that Roman clay jars for storing wine were integral to the process. No word on whether there was any ancient DNA in the clay.
- Breadfruit in the Pacific Islands, its domestication and origins of cultivars grown in East Polynesia and Micronesia. Spoiler alert: they came from Polynesian Outlier Islands.
In memory of Rainer Schultze-Kraft
Reproduced from Tropical Grasslands-Forrajes Tropicales with permission.
It is with great sadness that we announce the death of Rainer Schultze-Kraft, a friend, colleague and mentor, whose experience and in depth understanding of tropical forages made him an outstanding forage scientist. Rainer dedicated his career to tropical forage research and development, working at CIAT and University of Hohenheim. He was an avid germplasm collector and added almost 10,000 forage accessions to global collections. He was one of the original team to work on the tropical forages interactive selection tool to support use of forages and one of the founders of the journal, acting as managing editor and guiding the journal through the early years. His passing leaves a big gap in the tropical forages community that will be hard to fill and he will be sorely missed by his friends and colleagues.
There is also an obituary on the website of the Alliance of Bioversity & CIAT.
Nibbles: USDA germplasm plan, Millet CoP, Seed system resources, Kenyan sorghum Scottish crab apples, Heirloom maize, Yak cheese, Indian mangoes
- The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has a new National Strategic Germplasm and Cultivar Collection Assessment and Utilization Plan. Quite the tour de force. Now to get it funded.
- Yes, there’s now a community of practice on millets. Joined!
- The Seed System Lab at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences has lots of interesting resources on its new website.
- The latest on the Kenyan genebank’s sorghum work.
- Why wouldn’t Scotland have a crab apple genebank?
- Why Jimmy Red maize is worth saving, despite its faults.
- Yak cheese? Yes, please.
- And nice pics of Indian mangoes to close.
Nibbles: PlantSearch, Ranking apples, Pumpkin pix, Fruit pix, Livestock maps, Impact
- Searching for plants in botanic gardens.
- Searching for the best apple.
- Searching for pumpkins and squashes.
- Searching the Pomological Watercolor Collection.
- Searching for livestock.
- Searching for varietal turnover. And other kinds of impact.