Bammy – fried cassava bread – industry gets boost in Jamaica.
New efforts to domesticate grasses down under
The Australian Research Council has awarded A$ 1 million to Professor Robert Henry of Southern Cross University to examine about 1000 native grass species as potential replacements for wheat, rice and maize. The grant is framed as a response to global warming, but it is pretty interesting under any circumstances. Henry, Director of Southern Cross University’s Centre for Plant Conservation Genetics, told the Australian Associated Press that
the project targets the accelerated domestication of native species which have lower tillage and fertiliser requirements and increased salt, shade, frost and or drought tolerances than the current introduced cereal and fodder crops.
Of course, those grasses have been around since the first farmers landed in Australia, but they never tried to do anything with them. Because they couldn’t?
There is a great opportunity to use the new techniques of modern biology to accelerate the domestication of some of the more promising Australian native species.
Preliminary results are expected within three years, and seeds will be made available through a partnership with Native Seeds Pty Ltd. We shall see.
Tea in Taiwan
Bamboo charcoal oolong tea? I wanna try it.
MegaFishes Project
National Geographic has project to save world’s biggest freshwater fishes.
How the cat became a pet
A DNA study of almost a thousand wild and domestic cats from around the world is helping to unravel the evolutionary history of this most numerous of household pets. There are five wild subspecies of nearest-relatives, including one in the Near East, from which all domesticated cats are derived, though there has been subsequent hybridization of house cats with local wild populations here and there. Modern cat breeds can trace their origin to at least five mothers domesticated in the Fertile Crescent around the same time as agriculture started, over 9,000 years ago. And, coincidentally, there’s news also today of archaeological evidence from nearby Cyprus backing up that date.