In honour of Valentine’s Day, albeit a day late, a chocolate-flavoured post today. First, from the great Howstuffworks, How Chocolate Works. Then, ever wondered where you can get the best hot chocolate in New York or Paris? Well, wonder no longer, and check this out. And finally, news that a network has been established to conserve cacao diversity. You can read the Bioversity International press release here.
Dual-purpose weeds
Two stories today about different ways of looking at the same plant. I was walking along a fairly major road in a suburb of Nairobi this morning and I noticed a “jua kali” artisan selling interesting-looking stuff. “Jua kali” is Kiswahili for “under the sun” and is commonly used hereabouts to refer to the informal sector, because under the sun is where most of them transact their business, as in this case. Anyway, I ended up buying the magazine rack pictured here, for about US$15.
The frame is metal, but the rest is made of a tough-looking fibre I couldn’t place. I asked what it was and was very surprised to hear that it is water hyacinth. That’s a very cool use for a noxious weed, which is again choking up Lake Victoria, after a successful biological control effort. It turns out that making furniture out of the stuff is not all that uncommon.
And here’s the story of the mesquite bush in Kenya, a useful plant in some parts of the world (even used as food in some cultures), but seen as a terrible invasive here, in particular by pastoralists in the drier areas of the country. But I bet people are working on novel, profitable uses. Maybe someone in northern Kenya is already marketing mesquite honey, or carvings made of mesquite wood?
Brazil to market biodiversity
Under an Environment Ministry initiative in Brazil research groups have selected 775 species to encourage production and hopefully develop major markets. Read about it here:
Five books will be published this year, each dedicated to one of the five major regions of Brazil, containing the knowledge that has been accumulated about these “plants of the future”. Seminars for the business community will be held to spread the word about the potential of these plants, which are ornamental or used to produce foods, beverages, medicines, oils and perfumes.
British landraces
Maria Scholten has written to us with some interesting websites about British landraces. She says that as Brussels prepares a new directive on the conservation of agricultural landraces, it is important to have some idea about the landraces that still survive even in countries like the UK with a highly industrialized agriculture, and the efforts underway to conserve them.
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an English native red clover landrace marketed by a local British seed company
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a barley, probably introduced by the Vikings, being researched for marketing potential on Orkney
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a group of organic growers on Shetland working to maintain Shetland “aets†and bere barley, the historical cereals of Shetland
Thanks, Maria!
Olive oil spreads
There’s increasing recognition around the world that olive oil, as a key component of the so-called Mediterranean diet, is really good for you. The latest news is about its effect on ulcers. So obviously the traditional growing countries are trying to expand cultivation and production. But as this article points out, that’s not always so easy. Pity there’s nothing in the piece on varieties, though.