A technological innovation revives traditional home brew in Uganda.
Gone fishing
Rwandan farmers diversify into fish. Again.
The Breadfruit Story
That’s the title of just one of the sections of an exhibition of botanical watercolours, books and prints about the Caribbean called “Paradise in Print,” currently on at the New York Botanical Garden. The story it refers to, of course, is that of Captain Bligh, Fletcher Christian and the Bounty.
For an update on the story of the breadfruit’s global journey, go to VOA News. You’ll find an interview with — and a cooking demonstration by — my friend and world breadfruit expert Diane Ragone, director of the Breadfruit Institute at the National Tropical Botanical Gardens in Hawaii (both text and video).
The Breadfruit Institute maintains the world’s largest and most complete breadfruit germplasm collection. Diane has dedicated her life to the breadfruit, and in particular the idea that it can make a much greater contribution to the alleviation of hunger around the world. She and her research partners have been working on a tissue culture technique for the mass propagation and safe transfer of germplasm.
Non-Wood Forest Products
The new NWFP-Digest is out.
Pacific foods data tables
Hyperactive nutritionist and dear friend Lois Englberger in Pohnpei, Federated States of Micronesia tells me that the Community Food Data Tables of their Pohnpei case study have now been posted on the Centre for Indigenous Peoples’ Nutrition and Environment (CINE) website. Pohnpei was one of the twelve case studies in the global health and indigenous foods project led by CINE’s Prof. Harriet Kuhnlein. There’s background information and the main findings of the Pohnpei study based in Mand, a list of the research team members, as well as photos of Karat (banana), Meikole (seeded breadfruit variety), Simihden (well-liked giant swamp taro variety), pandanus and fish liver. Yummie.