- “The most closely related aphids were those feeding on the same host species, rather than those from the same geographic area.”
- “I’m looking for a restaurant chef who would like to spend some time with me, learn something about my garden and the plants I’m growing, and experiment with cooking some dishes and possibly serving them to a small number of customers. ”
- “It isn’t sustainable, it isn’t very natural, but it tastes great.”
- Filipinos set up seaweed genebank and nursery.
- Eat the View: the Story of the White House Garden Campaign.
- “Foreign varieties of cotton and date palms have become a threat to local species here in Upper Sindh. …these varieties are affecting agriculture, forest and environment of Sindh, this threat can be overcome with the plantation of the Neem Tree.”
Ampelographical errors good and bad
It has recently emerged that some Australian vine growers have been growing Savagnin Blanc (Traminer), an obscure French variety from the Jura, rather than what they thought they had planted, the considerably sexier Spanish grape Albarino. Apparently, CSIRO was sent mis-labelled cuttings by the National Germplasm Collection of Spain, a mistake that was spotted only after DNA work. It’s all explained, with what I suspect is relish, in an article in the New Zealand Herald. ((The problem seems to have surfaced in the press back in April, but we missed it at the time.)) Just the latest in a long line of trans-Tasman wine spats.
For the Australian winegrowers that have planted the 150ha currently in production in the country, this discovery is a blow as while there’s demand for albarino, the profile of savagnin – which they must now label wines made from these vines – is considerably lower.
As the article points out, not all such errors in identification are bad news.
Over a decade ago in Chile, another case of confusion proved more fruitful when what the Chileans had previously considered merlot actually turned out to be carmenere. This “lost grape of Bordeaux” was virtually extinct until it was found alive and growing very well among the merlot in Chile. It was a situation that inadvertently preserved the variety and led to the New World wine-producing nation to embrace it as a real point of difference and claim it as its flagship variety.
DNA fingerprinting should put a stop to this, of course. But as there are “5000 wine grape varieties with over 20,000 different monikers,” at least according to the article, it may be a while until cases of vine mistaken identity are things of the past.
Visualizing agrobiodiversity in markets
I’ve just come across two Flickr groups which are intensely interesting from an agrobiodiversity perspective. Flickr is a photo sharing site, and I have in fact blogged about it before here, for example on how it could be used to map crop diversity. The two groups bring together photos taken in markets, with a lot of fruits and vegetables featured. As with my previous post on tomatoes, have a look at the mapping option in particular. A great time-waster, but I bet it could be used to look at geographic patterns in vegetable diversity in markets.
Nibbles: Perenniality, Very minor millet, Red rice, Market, Cacao et al.
- Aussies test perennial wheat. Luigi asks: should they be growing wheat at all?
- What is the world’s most obscure crop? The Archaeobotanist makes his case: Spodiopogon formosanus Rendle.
- Tourism does for “red rice.”
- “The Wonjoku family in Muea was renowned for the manufacture of hoes, cutlasses, knives, chisels, spears, axes, brass bangles, brass spindles and tools for uprooting stumps of elephant grass.”
- Nestlé says its new R&D centre in Abidjan will help it source high-quality raw materials of cocoa, coffee and cassava locally, “which in turn will raise the income and the quality of life of local farmers.” Hope conservation gets a look-in.