- The Silk Road Gourmet talks about Reconstructing Cuisines And Recipes From The Ancient World.
- Colin Tudge splutters about The Founding Fables of Industrialised Agriculture.
- India’s ongoing onion crisis still a vale of tears.
- But India’s jowar (sorghum) still offers superficial health benefits.
- You know how all the US soybeans are being exported to China? Think again.
- How the nasturtium got its spur; not a just-so-story.
- California discovers the productive miracle of fish in rice paddies.
David Lynch cooks quinoa
I borrowed the image from the same place that brought this — David Lynch cooks quinoa — to the world’s attention. No really. But where’s the high-quality version? And the missing minutes? C’mon. And in Part II, what sounds like Inca Cola, but isn’t. In the dark!
Seriously, this has to be seen.
Brainfood: Italian almonds, Bamboo in Europe, Ethiopian barley, Cryo bird balls, Finnish cattle products, Adaptation strategies, Soil microbes, RSA droughty SP, Livestock integration
- Genetic diversity and relationships among Italian and foreign almond germplasm as revealed by microsatellite markers. I hate it when abstracts of paywalled papers don’t really tell you anything of any use.
- Bamboo as a Crop in Western Europe – a SWOT Analysis. Yeah that’s not going to happen.
- Phenotypic Diversity for Qualitative Characters of Barley (Hordeum vulgare (L.[/efn_note] Landrace Collections from Southern Ethiopia. Need to focus conservation on Dawro, Sheka, Gamgofa and Keffa and across altitudes. I can’t believe we didn’t already know that but, unlike with the Italian almonds, at least this bit of potentially useful information is in the abstract. And the paper is free.
- Cryoconservation of avian gonads in Canada. And why not.
- Consumers as Conservers—Could Consumers’ Interest in a Specialty Product Help to Preserve Endangered Finncattle? Yes, if the consumers are green male carnivores. But then I could probably have told you that.
- What Influences Farmers’ Choice of Indigenous Adaptation Strategies for Agrobiodiversity Loss in Northern Ghana? Well, if I read this right, it is whether they have a radio, off-farm income and access to extension. But the math is complicated.
- Does agricultural crop diversity enhance soil microbial biomass and organic matter dynamics? A meta-analysis. They mean rotations, and the answer is yes.
- Evaluation of selected sweetpotato (Ipomoea batatas) accessions for drought tolerance. Gotta love it when a genebank gets some use and a student gets a degree.
- Integrated crop–livestock systems: Strategies to achieve synergy between agricultural production and environmental quality. Livestock are the key to ecologically sustainable intensification. But then they would say that, wouldn’t they.
Nibbles: Oca, Tasmanian Potatoes, Pasture diversity, Training for NUS, Kales
- There are still people who think oca is a kind of potato. After all we’ve done for them.
- And speaking of New Zealand Yams, here’s an old article about Tasmanian boutique potatoes.
- Pasture diversity for animal welfare and profit
- Young scientist in sub-Saharan Africa? Get trained on aspects of neglected and underutilized species.
- So you thought kale was an ancient veggie? Think again. NYT features kale innovators.
Stop vitamin A supplements
The editorial by Thorne-Lyman and Fawzi in 2011, (1) referring to the meta-analysis of the impact of vitamin A supplements by Mayo-Wilson, Imdad and others, (2,3) has now become more important than ever. The DEVTA results, only informally available in 2011, have now been published, (4) with extensive implications; indeed, as the editorial (1) says: ‘… the null findings have left lingering questions. Is vitamin A supplementation effective?’. These results have been the subject of conflicting comments recently in the Lancet, e.g. (5,6). But a number of inferences that should be drawn from the compilation and analysis of the evidence from trials prior to DEVTA (2,3) help answer this lingering question, and have not received adequate attention. There are three key related points, which now point to the need to seriously consider concrete steps to move beyond 6-monthly vitamin A supplementation at unphysiological levels.
OK, there’s a lot in that introduction to a recent paper in the British Medical Journal to digest, but it is worth it. I know I bang on about the colossal boondoggle that is high-dose vitamin A supplementation, but there’s a reason. It seems to be a complete waste of money based on a very limited reading of the evidence. In 2011 the BMJ published an editorial on Improving child survival through vitamin A supplementation (which is behind a paywall) that referenced a meta-analysis of supplementation. The new paper — Is vitamin A supplementation effective? — brings things up to date with a more detailed analysis of some of the research only hinted at in the original articles. Bottom line: there is no evidence for large-scale effectiveness of vitamin A supplements on child mortality.
As the authors of the rebuttal ask, why are resources still going into supplementation campaigns of the old sort? And they conclude:
Improved diets, fortified foods, and multiple micronutrient provision would surely bring broader improvements in nutrition to more people, including reproductive aged women who are now largely excluded.