More on an agrobiodiversity-related bit of human diversity, for a change.
More on school gardens
A brief summary of edible schoolyards in the US, with useful links. A couple more links that I snagged over at Desertification. A new book on Gardening with Children and an article about how teachers in San Francisco are using gardening, with a video. Desertification has also published a comment on the subject as a full post, which seems like a neat bit of recycling.
Buckwheat musings
Greetings from Nairobi. I’m here for a week’s rest and relaxation, which does not of course preclude blogging! Anyway, what I wanted to write about has nothing to do with Kenya. Or at least I don’t think buckwheat — our subject this evening — is grown here. It all started a week back when I went up to Lucca, near Pisa, for the weekend. That included a lot of eating, of course, and one of the dishes that particularly struck me was a main course composed of a thin tortilla-type thing, folded up, and filled with a nice sauce. I can’t remember the name of the dish, but the tortilla was made of “grano Saraceno,” according to the menu. I hadn’t heard the name, but a little snooping confirmed it to be buckwheat. A rarish crop in Italy, but nevertheless the basis of some interesting traditional recipes. Now, I knew a little about buckwheat, but next to nothing about its nutritious relative, Tartar(y) buckwheat. And I certainly didn’t know that there’s an easily de-hulled variety of this crop called rice-tartary which promises to be a boon to breeders. Nor that you can emasculate the flowers with hot water, which could also be useful if you’re trying to make crosses. I should eat out more.
Nutrition news from the Antipodes
What do these fruits have in common: Kakadu plum, Illawarra plum, Burdekin plum, Davidson’s plum, riberry, red and yellow finger limes, Tasmanian pepper, brush cherry, Cedar Bay cherry, muntries and Molucca raspberry? Five points if you said “They’re all native Australian fruits”. Ten points if you said “According to this press release I just read, they’re exceptional sources of antioxidants identified in research published in the journal Innovative Food Science & Emerging Technologies”.
Ten points to me.
Tree domestication a huge success
There’s a heart-warming tale over at the Rural Poverty Portal (nice site, too) of the International Fund for Agricultural Development. A tree domestication project in west Africa has brought higher incomes and improved status for women, which has translated into schooling and better nutrition. Women are running their own tree nurseries, selecting which species to grow and nurturing them for market. So far the number of species is limited, perhaps that will improve. The project was implemented by the World Agroforestry Centre.