- The latest on the Pristine Myth of the Amazon. And how to protect it.
- Rice going nuclear in Bangladesh.
- NYC gets a chocolate museum.
- What is biodiversity? Answers on a postcard, please…
- Maybe robots can help with that.
- Crops for the Future gets the Virginia Gewin treatment.
- Sheep domestication in half a page.
Sweet day
On this fine day, meet Dr Janaki Ammal…
By manipulating polyploid cells through cross-breeding of hybrids in the laboratory, Janaki was able to create a high yielding strain of the sugarcane that would thrive in Indian conditions. Her research also helped analyse the geographical distribution of sugarcane across India, and to establish that the S. Spontaneum variety of sugarcane had originated in India.
…India’s first woman PhD in botany, and a pioneer in the use of wild relatives in sugarcane breeding.
An incredible woman who spent her life in the pursuit of science, Janaki Ammal believed that it was through her work that she should be remembered. So, the next time you use a spoonful of sugar grown by an Indian sugarcane farmer, remember that you are it was Dr Janaki Ammal who added that extra bit of sweetness!
Nibbles: Meet a breeder, Radiation breeding, Cassava IK, Banana apocalypse, Chestnut doom & gloom, Crazy grafter, Crazy recombination, Obsidian sickle, Cat rug
- Meet a pumpkin breeder.
- Meet the history of atomic plant breeding.
- Meet a cassava anthropologist.
- Dial back the banana apocalypse stuff, banana guy says.
- On the other hand, the American chestnut apocalypse is all too real.
- A really wild pig.
- Grafting gone wild.
- Wild plants reveal a gene to speed plant breeding, someday.
- Beautiful Neolithic tools from the Sea of Galilee.
- And a beautiful, but slightly freaky, Egyptian rug. Made of cat hair.
Nibbles: Wheat rust, Coconut history, Svalbard, Cahokia, Millets, Politics, Crones & robots, Citrus history, Argan development
- Rust continues to never sleep.
- The discussion of whether there were coconuts on the Pacific coast of Panama prior to the Conquista continues on the Coconut Google Group.
- ICARDA and CIMMYT continue to love the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.
- Climate change continues to be implicated in past societal collapses.
- NPR continues to plug those millets.
- Cautionary tale of Vavilov and Lysenko continues to be told, thankfully.
- The rise and rise of the drone continues. See what I did there?
- The relentless popular culture journey of citrus continues.
- And that of argan begins.
Coconut history 101
Coconut expert Hugh Harries has sent us this comment on the recent article in AramcoWord entitled Cracking Coconut’s History, by Ramin Ganeshram.
Amusingly illustrated and attractively written, in this article Ramin Ganeshram records that in the last few years coconut production, export and processing have become a multibillion-dollar global industry. In fact, coconut was global from the 1860s to the 1960s. It was the leading vegetable oil on international markets for the best part of a century.
Ramin does not mention Polynesians or the Pacific Ocean, but to them the coconut was more than a source of income. It was the life-support system that ensured their extraordinary survival in locations where coconut palms are routinely decimated by hurricanes and tsunamis or simply washed away by rising sea levels.
The article is not quite up to date as a history, even though Ramin refers to the genetic testing underwritten by the National Geographic Society in 2011. This confirmed that today’s cultivated coconut originated in India and Southeast Asia but, surprisingly, claimed it was taken by boat to the Pacific coast of America more than 2,000 years ago. Yet coconuts would not survive since then without cultivation to control weeds and pests or recover from natural disaster.
There is a general consensus coconuts grow very well on coral atolls but an equally general disagreement as to whether they were dispersed to remote islands by floating and were capable of self establishment, or if not, were carried by boat and planted where they could not float.
This is most clearly recognised where they were introduced in Central America and the Caribbean in the mid 16th century. Indian or East African coconuts carried by Portuguese boats into the Atlantic reached Brazil and Puerto Rico by the 1550s. At much the same time, Southeast Asian coconuts were taken by the first Spanish mariners who found the the Manila-Acapulco route in 1565.
It was only when the Panama canal opened 100 years ago that the differences between the two contrasting types were recognised when those from the Pacific coast were imported to Jamaica for replanting areas devastated by hurricanes.
My thanks to Ramin Ganeshram for giving me the opportunity to add some information that I hope will be useful when a revised second edition of this history is prepared.