- That claim of Neolithic Georgian wine is, ahem, problematic.
- Yam cultivation can be, ahem, problematic.
- Neglecting women in breeding programmes can be, ahem, problematic.
- Khat cultivation is, ahem, problematic.
- Post-conquest depictions of the cacao plant were, ahem, problematic.
- Imperial plant collecting was, ahem, problematic. But the BBC doesn’t care.
- I find the claim that the potato saved Europe from war, ahem, problematic.
- No problem at all about cooking taro.
Nibbles: Tamed, Avocado trifecta, Chinese art, Opuntia, Breeding book, Ari.Farm, Grand Canyon ag
- Nice podcast on Prof. Alice Roberts’ book on domestication, Tamed.
- Remember yesterday’s Nibble on Mexico’s avocado security problem? Wait till they start growing these seedless ones. Or this one, for that matter.
- Is this jade bok choy the most famous botanically-themed work of art?
- Let them eat cactus.
- Plant breeding as a business: the book.
- You can use Bitcoin to buy Somali goats.
- Corn wasn’t king in the ancient American SW. Ruderals were.
Nibbles: Orphan edition
- The Economist jumps on the genomics-for-orphan-crops bandwagon.
- But is phenomics more important?
- And seed systems, don’t forget seed systems…
- Some of those orphan crops may get an International Day, if India has anything to do with it.
- Immortelle is as orphan as they come, but maybe not in Croatia any more.
- Amaranthus never really went away, not in Mexico.
- Persimmon, meanwhile, is being adopted by the snack industry in the US. But the Japanese are way ahead.
- Some think yerba mate is not orphan enough.
- Is yam an orphan. It depends on what your definition of is is.
- Avocado is the opposite of orphaned in Mexico. It is spoiled rotten.
- Many orphan crops are women’s crops. Case in point: enset.
- Orphan is a relative term, and reversible.
- Exhibit B: sweet potato.
- People often take their orphan crops with them. Even in antiquity.
- Coconut is fast becoming an orphan in Tanzania.
- With 32 cultivars available to grow in Louisiana alone, nobody can say lettuce is an orphan.
- Mexico and Brazil collaborate on crop diversity conservation. Including orphan crops?
- One thing that is probably not a huge priority for orphan crops is their wild relatives. Just saying.
- Anyway, we’re going to need all the orphan crops we can get if James Cameron’s titanic vegetarian utopia is to come true.
Nibbles: Seed biz, declining agricultural biodiversity, fad economics
- Puerto Rico is the location for R&D of “up to 85 percent of the commercial corn, soybean and other hybrid seeds grown in the US”. Nope, I did not know that either.
- “According to Bioversity International, an international research and policy organization, just three crops — rice, wheat and maize — provide more than half of plant-derived calories consumed worldwide,” says online magazine. Excellent, we now have a reliable source.
- Marc Bellemare spills the beans on fad foods quinoa and avocado
Nibbles: Joanne Labate, Gebisa Ejeta, David Spooner, Strawberry 101, Mad honey, First figs, Agrobiodiversity maps, School project, Takesgiving, Private investment
- USDA vegetable crop curator tells it like it is.
- $5 million to find more Striga resistance genes in sorghum.
- Wild potato herbarium specimens find good home.
- How two New World strawberries got together in the Old World and then spread all over the world.
- Hallucinogenic honey: what could possibly go wrong?
- First farmers gave a fig.
- The other of all agrobiodiversity map mashups.
- Cool school project on crop diversity in Europe.
- In other news, “Columbusing” is a thing.
- Private sector investment in conservation: Turning “small and new” into “big and familiar.”