- Plant domestication versus crop evolution: a conceptual framework for cereals and grain legumes. Only traits showing clear dimorphism between wild and cultivated taxa are really part of Domestication Syndrome. If there’s a continuum, it happened afterwards.
- Reconfiguring Agrobiodiversity in the Amazon Estuary: Market Integration, the Açaí Trade and Smallholders’ Management Practices in Amapá, Brazil. Açaí driving out other crops. Sometimes those underutilized crops should stay that way? Maybe not, as at the same time, homegardens are diversifying.
- Mining germplasm banks for photosynthetic improvement — wheat, rice, potato, legumes and maize. You need maps.
- Do faba bean (Vicia faba L.) accessions from environments with contrasting seasonal moisture availabilities differ in stomatal characteristics and related traits? Yes. Those maps again.
- Can Polish wheat (Triticum polonicum L.) be an interesting gene source for breeding wheat cultivars with increased resistance to Fusarium head blight? What do you think?
- Genetic diversity and classification of Oryza sativa with emphasis on Chinese rice germplasm. Six major groups, not five. We shall see.
- Genetic dissection of drought tolerance in chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.). It could all (or mostly) be down to one genomic region.
- Historical changes in the process of agricultural development in Cuba. I suppose one could say that, in a way, it’s back to the future.
- Developing more productive African agroforestry systems and improving food and nutritional security through tree domestication. Participation, post-production, private-public partnership.
- Market-based mechanisms for biodiversity conservation: a review of existing schemes and an outline for a global mechanism. Need to have a standard unit of measurement, and a mechanism for ensuring a long-term perspective. Can agricultural biodiversity learn from this?
Nibbles: Freekeh, Teff, African Chef, Inga agroforestry, Apple erosion
- Freekeh is the new quinoa. What, the next environmental and social catastrophe for the Bolivian altiplano?
- Oh no, sorry, it’s teff that’s the new quinoa.
- Only a matter of time until African Chef gets hold of it then.
- And no doubt Inga edulis is not far behind.
- Let’s hope it doesn’t go the way of the McIntosh.
Nibbles: Bovine flatulence, New bananas, Cyperus, Pepper history, Ancient rice, Indian Act, Indians act, CIFOR achievements, Pooch podcast, Milk, Buzz, Commons, Sorghum sociology, Water spinach meme, AGRF
- The taxonomy of cow farts. Can’t improve on that title.
- What the hell is Hawaiian Plantain, and why is it needed in Panama?
- Ever eat a sedge?
- Bet they could do with some pepper.
- Ancient Japanese rice found. Let the DNA extraction begin.
- Indian farmers can now claim royalties on traditional varieties. What could possibly go wrong?
- How about paying them to preserve “traditional and fast disappearing millets“?
- Video on CIFOR’s greatest successes. I think the greatest failures would be more instructive.
- Self-consciously cool (but don’t let put you off) podcast on the domestication of the dog.
- The evolution of human lactose persistence, however, is not all about calcium.
- Today’s theory about honeybee deaths is sure to be discussed at today’s honeybee health summit.
- Can participatory mapping save the commons? Probably not, but fun nevertheless.
- Fun? How about the successful defence of a thesis on “The social structure of cultivated plants: the influence of exchanges, representations and practices on sorghum diversity in Mount Kenya’s people”.
- Keep calm and eat kangkung. Don’t you love it when one meme eats another?
- Say you want an African Green Revolution Forum … Well, you know, go to Maputo.
Joining up the dots
Four blog posts from the CGIAR today. Related, as you’ll see, but not connected. Leaving us to join up the dots. Because that’s what we do. You’re welcome, CGIAR.
- From ICRAF, to kick things off, a piece summarizing the editorial accompanying the special edition of the journal Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability. The message is that the interaction between people and trees, in forests or agroforestry, is complicated and its study requires systemic approaches.
- Funnily enough, over at CIFOR there’s an example of just such a study, looking at the relationship between forest cover and children’s nutrition. Which encountered just the sort of problem alluded to above: “We were unable to figure out from our data whether people living near forests are collecting more nutritious foods from the forest, if they are cultivating them on farms and in agro-forests, or a combination.” Awkward.
- And so we come to the Landscapes for People, Food and Nature Initiative’s post on the use of mapping to look at ecosystem services. Including presumably the sort of ecosystem services the previous two pieces looked at.
- Funny though how it doesn’t mention CIAT’s work on using GIS to look at the level of forest protection actually enjoyed by Colombian forests in that country’s protected are system.
LATER: Ok, ok, the third one is not really from the CGIAR. Read the comment for more.
Demon pepper unmasked
“A friend” reached out to me with a strange request. “What could Tasmanian mezereon possibly be?” Seems he’d been served it at a fancy place in Germany.
The name tinkled a faint bell, which turned out on closer listening to be Daphne mezereum, a pretty shrub whose twigs are highly toxic, an extract being used to blister the skin (why? — wart removal?) and to treat arthritis (again, why?). That didn’t seem right, and anyway, the plant isn’t from Tasmania.
There have also been racehorses of that name, but when I offered that as a possibility, my friend said only “might have been, judging only by the taste”.
At this point I naturally had the bit between my teeth, so to speak, and set off in hot pursuit. Further searching revealed the item in question on the English language version of the fancy place’s website, to which I refuse to link as it assailed me with cheesy music. Looking at the website, though, all of the English seemed to be just a bit off. And the menu item in question:
Tenderlion [sic] of beef iced with hibiscus
Tasmanian mezereon au jus
A bunch of pumpkin, serrano-thai-asparagus
and risotto
As an aside, why bother even having an English language site if you can’t be arsed to pay for it. Anyway, off to the (presumably original) German version:
Rinderfilet mit Hibiskus glasiert
Tasmanische Bergpfefferjus
Kürbis, Thaispargel-Serrano-Bündchen
und Risotto
Now we’re getting somewhere. A quick search for Tasmanian mountain pepper, and Bingo!. Tasmannia lanceolata.
As my friend noted, “that is super interesting”.
I wonder what the Germans would have made of Cornish pepperleaf?