- Shipwreck offers insights into agricultural trade in Turkey 1500 years ago.
- Coffee from alpha to omega.
- Drought-resistant crops for East Africa. Well, yes. And more specifically…
- “African” crops in America.
- Program to focus on making better use of vegetables. And that “program” has been going since 1986! Who knew?
- Why we should all be taxonomists.
Nibbles: Gossypium, Helianthus, Cacao, Berries, Heirlooms, Seminars
- Cotton domestication deconstructed.
- Sunflower domestication deconstructed too.
- Chocolate smell deconstructed.
- Exotic (North American) wild berries deconstructed.
- “Heirloom” deconstructed.
- XXIII Regional agrobiodiversity seminar and the X Regional traditional seed market. The region being Contestado, in Brazil. Deconstruction not available.
Taking tomato improvement to the masses
It’s basically your standard I-found-redemption-in-a-tomato-heirloom story:
Another life somewhere in the pastoral wilds of Co Kilkenny, in a summer long ago, the wife of a Finnish jewellerymaker brought slices of tomato to the lunch table: slices a centimetre thick, a hand’s breadth across, jewel-bright with olive oil and scattered with chopped green basil. This simple revelation of what tomatoes should be, enfolded in mouthfuls of sweetness and scent, set my early hankering for the good life.
But this piece in the Irish Times did teach me something for a change. It taught me there’s something called the EU-Sol project “to improve the quality of the tomatoes and potatoes we eat.” But there’s more to it than that: check out the bits of its website aimed at the general public and schools.
Nibbles: Kiss apple, Cryptic variation, Brewing yeast history, Sandalwood genebank, Large chile, Red dye, Grassland, Fish eco-labeling, Radiation
- Koreans breed bite-sized apple for breath-freshening. Why can’t I find a picture?
- Climate change bad for genetic diversity too. Tell that to taro in Cameroon.
- Lager yeast came from South America. Thank you, Argentina! And more on long-distance microbe movement.
- Field Gene Bank of Threatened Plants from the Western Ghats threatened.
- Man’s 16-inch chili may be a record. Get your mind out of the gutter.
- The source of Turkish Red.
- “The proper use of native grasslands is to use them as grasslands…”
- Something fishy about eco-labeling.
- Japanese boffins trying to breed radiation-tolerant rice. Maybe they should look at this map in their search for parents for their crossing programme.
Grandma with her new tree tomatoes
Hello there, everyone. Just back from a three-week break back home in Kenya. I’ll blog about the mother-in-law and her attempts at diversification in the Kenya highlands in the next day or two…
