- AI doesn’t recognize tropical agriculture very well.
- So presumably it can’t easily be used in assessing climate change impacts in agricultural heritage systems? FAO has some ideas on how to do it.
- Maybe rice heritage systems can be used to make cheese.
- I bet Andean blueberry (Vaccinium floribundum) goes great with rice cheese.
- But if not, heritage apples will probably do.
- The Hungarian genebank is hoping to inject heritage grains into non-heritage agricultural systems. AI and FAO unavailable for comment.
- Maybe AI can help with the mystery of this old seed collection at the Natural History Museum, London.
JSTOR in a pickle with Jeremy
From Jeremy’s latest newsletter. To which of course you should subscribe. You’ll see he mentions Charles Darwin right up front, which allows me to link to a new course based on teaching materials created by Darwin’s Cambridge menor, Prof. John Stevens Henslow.
Plant of the Month from JSTOR is the cucumber. As usual for this series, there’s a ton of fascinating information and links, from the compilation of cats confronted by cucumbers to their inspiration of one of Charles Darwin’s lesser-known books.
Why, though, cool as a cucumber? In some sense it seems obvious that the cucumber is simply well-flavoured wateriness most available during summer’s heat. Could it, really, have prevented sweating? And while people swear by the beneficial effects of a good, thick slice on the eyes as a rejuvenator, reducer of puffiness, etc., etc., there doesn’t seem to be any good evidence that a cucumber is better than, say, a used tea bag or wet cotton wool. JSTOR doesn’t even mention the practice.
Allow me, please, a quibble. JSTOR’s caption for its first image … is “Two dill cucumbers. Watercolour painting by a Chinese artist”. Fair enough, that is how it is labelled at its source. But surely a cucumber on the vine cannot be a dill cucumber until it has been brined and fermented, with dill.
And if that’s not confusing enough, try a deep dive into cucurbit names, an episode from 2016.
Brainfood: Yield double, NUS double, Wild food plants, NbS, Portuguese genebanks, School meals, Indian nutrition, Nutritional diversity trifecta
- Releasing agriculture from the food security mandate. Research should focus toward sustaining production means and farmer welfare, rather than area productivity.
- Beyond yields: a systems approach is essential for reconciling agriculture and biodiversity. Research should focus toward sustaining production means and farmer welfare, rather than area productivity.
- Underutilized crops for diverse, resilient and healthy agri-food systems: a systematic review of sub-Saharan Africa. Opportunity crops sustain production means and farmer welfare, rather than area productivity.
- Exploring the potentials of neglected underutilized crops (NUCs): an integrative review for developing a sustainable food system model. Opportunity crops sustain production means and farmer welfare, rather than area productivity.
- Prospective of indigenous African wild food plants in alleviation of the severe iron deficiency anaemia in Sub-Saharan Africa. Some wild food plants can sustain welfare.
- Nature-based agricultural practices in the Mediterranean agroecosystems: A meta-analysis of their benefits on crop productivity, soil quality, and biodiversity. 15 ways to sustain production means and farmer welfare, and sometimes area productivity.
- The role of Seed Banks in food systems transitions: the case of Portugal. Genebanks could help sustain production means and farmer welfare, and area productivity too.
- Mainstreaming agrobiodiversity in planet-friendly school meals for children: a scoping review. Opportunity crops and wild food plants in school meals could help sustain the welfare of schoolchildren.
- Spatial association between nutrient deficiency and agricultural diversity in India. Agrobiodiversity could help sustain welfare in whole districts actually.
- Grain zinc, iron and protein concentrations of contemporary wheat cultivars fall short of targets for human health. Agrobiodiversity could help sustain welfare but breeders need to use it.
- Nutritional and Biochemical Diversity in Beans Accessions from Three Phaseolus Species Using Multiomics Characterization. Agrobiodiversity could definitely help sustain welfare but breeders need to use it.
- Genome-wide association study in a lettuce core collection from 811 accessions reveals genetic loci for anthocyanin accumulation and cultivar development. Agrobiodiversity could definitely help sustain welfare and breeders can use it pretty easily.
Unchaining genebanks
Can the food processing industry contribute to the conservation and sustainable use of agricultural biodiversity? Of course it can. Even in genebanks? Sure, why not. There’s no reason beyond a failure of the imagination to think that genebanks can’t participate directly in the food value chain as innovation partners, supporting sustainable products and market differentiation. Too bad there’s not a ton of examples. A pretty good one is NordGen’s partnerships with the food company Oatly. Oatly funded trials of more than 800 oat accessions, generating phenotypic and genomic data that identified traits valuable for taste and processing. The collaboration provided industry with suitable varieties while enriching NordGen’s documentation of its collection. This and a few — too few — other examples can be found in From seed to shelf: Models for integrating agrobiodiversity in food processing activities, from FAO and the Plant Treaty. I hope one day soon the coffee industry wakes up and smell the genebanks.
Brainfood: History edition
- Phylogenetics and evolution of Digitaria grasses, including cereal crops fonio, raishan and Polish millet. The history of wild Digitaria goes back 2–6 million years.
- Biogeography of Crop Progenitors and Wild Plant Resources in the Terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene of West Asia, 14.7–8.3 ka. This is what the distribution of crop wild relatives looked like in West Asia 10 thousand years ago or thereabouts. No Digitaria, but plenty of other stuff.
- Ancient use and long-distance transport of the Four Corners Potato (Solanum jamesii) across the Colorado Plateau: Implications for early stages of domestication. At roughly the same time, a couple continents and an ocean over, a local potato species was being processed outside its rage. Was it cultivated? Do the math.
- State formation across cultures and the role of grain, intensive agriculture, taxation and writing. And a few thousand years later, there were domesticated grains, states, and taxes. In that order. Do the math.
- The Archaeology of Olive Oil Production in Roman and Pre-Roman Italy. Pretty sure the Romans had a state and taxes. They also had domesticated olives.
- Wines of Fire and Earth: Exploring the Volcanic Terroirs of the Canary Islands – a Case Study. No Romans on the Canaries, but plenty of vines.
- Black Death Land Abandonment Drove European Diversity Losses. The Romans and their successors, with their cereals, olives and grapes, were surprisingly good for landscape floristic diversity. The Black Death, not so much.
- The decades-old fantasy of enhancing pigeonpea productivity. Well that’s a bit of a letdown after a 6 million year journey.
- Past, present and future of local crop evolution. That’s because we needed Indigenous people and local communities to show us the way.