Yes, yet another thematic trifecta. I swear I don’t go out looking for these, they just pop up every once in a while. CABI’s excellent blog had a piece today about CABI’s own fungal genetic resources collection and its value as a source of useful compounds. It includes Fleming’s original penicillin-producing strain so it does have form in that regard. Then Seeds Aside has a post on variation among olive varieties in a gene for an allergenic protein found on the pollen grain. And finally, over at the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, a thumbnail sketch of the redoubtable Phebe Lankester, who wrote extensively on both botany and health — and occasionally on the link between the two — in the latter part of the 19th century. 1
More on thatching
A couple of weeks back I alluded to problems in the thatching industry in the UK and linked to a piece by Danny at Rurality. Well, I put in the wrong link (now fixed), and anyway Danny’s post was pretty short and it was talking about an article that is not online. But never fear, if you’re really interested in the crisis in British thatching, you can read about it in the Telegraph. Or you can get the bullet-point version at Cronaca.
Nibbles: Alabama genebank, sunflower, fruit dispersal, IAASTD
- Seed bank saves Alabama heirloom varieties, y’all.
- Retrotransposons go wild in sunflower. Kansas to the rescue.
- Avocados and gomphotheres. Apples and bears. Welcome back, Evil Fruit Lord!
- More about the IAASTD and its paradigm shift thing.
Momi-2008
The latest of Mitsuaki Tanabe’s monuments to wild rice was unveiled in the FAO building in Rome yesterday. Tanabe has donated this sculpture to the Global Crop Diversity Trust, and it is now installed by a window just in front of the Trust’s offices. Representing a seed of Oryza meridionalis, which is found in northern Australia, “Momi-2008” is about 9 m long and about 250 kg in weight. It took 20 men to get it up the stairs. This photo doesn’t really do it justice.
Nibbles: Tangled Bank
- If you’re here from Tangled Bank 102, welcome. Go vote, please. If you’re here anyway, go read Tangled Bank.
- Bleeding canker threatens British horse chestnuts.
- Meanwhile, in the Netherlands, fertilizers threaten the Drumstick Truffleclub.
- Michael Pollan welcomes higher food prices. And more on his new book on “nutritionism”: eat food (not individual nutrients); mostly plant-derived; in reasonable amounts.
- Breadfruit balls anyone? Try charging more for that delicacy, Michael!
- Or, indeed, this. Or any of these for that matter.
- The weird food stuff just keeps on coming. Now there’s buzz about camel cheese. And a Peanut Lolita to help it down?
- Horizon scanning spots 25 novel threats to biodiversity in UK. Agrobiodiversity apparently totally safe. Phew.