- The latest meta-analysis of organic agriculture says it can feed the world.
- The latest update on saving the wild ginseng adds pretty much nothing to previous updates.
- The latest look at Aboriginal land burning says it did no damage.
- The latest study of insects as feed says they’re good for you. Still no word on whether they’re good.
- Not sure whether I’ve ever seen a study linking biotech corn for biofuels with the abandonment of rotation, but it makes sense. And more.
- The latest investigation of early childhood nutrition still says it’s important.
- The latest Italian food scam involves painting olives.
- The latest pean to crop wild relatives says it’s still about control, man.
- The latest report on dams again says you have to be careful.
Nibbles: History edition
- No, I don’t think the history of potatoes is at an end, but I know what they mean.
- The history of rubber in pics.
- The history of the wheat dwarfing gene.
- Svalbard makes history.
- Sicily goes back into its history for its daily bread.
- Another foothold in history for Gary Nabhan.
- History, shmistory, we need to look forward. Biohacking is the future of food. Say twelve year olds.
Ban or breed?
I’m not sure I was aware of the fact that grasspea (khesari dal, or Lathyrus sativus) was actually banned in parts of India due to its toxicity. Devinder Sharma, a food and trade policy analyst, thinks the ban should not be lifted, International Year of Pulses notwithstanding. Instead, alternative crops should be promoted, such as pigeonpea (arhar, or Cajanus cajan). It’s interesting that there’s no Indian grasspea in the genebanks that Genesys knows about (red), 1 in stark comparison to pigeonpea (blue).
Lathyrism is a problem in situations where grasspea is pretty much the only thing you have to eat. In former times, when famines were more frequent, the ban probably made sense. But is this still the case? And in any case there’s also lots of research going on low-neurotoxin varieties. A ban is hardly likely to provide much of an incentive for such breeding work.
Nibbles: Pharaonic bull, Moving the cheese, Popping the corn, Persian food double, Sweet potato galore
- Cattle in ancient Egypt.
- Because yesterday was National Cheese Day and we missed it.
- The protein to which we owe cheese.
- The anatomy of popcorn.
- Pat Heslop-Harrison interviewed on Iranian saffron.
- And more Persian foodstuffs.
- Orange sweet potato going wide in Mozambique. And where it came from.
Nibbles: Gastronomy edition
- Gastronomy comes to the Amazon.
- Maybe it should come to Tikal too.
- You know it’s already in Mexico.
- Not to mention Peru.
- Preparing decent coffee counts as gastronomy, I guess. But SL28 is not genetically engineered. Not in the usual sense, anyway.
- Not sure that eels have much of a future in gastronomy.
- Into Africa: Indian seeds. And Indian gastronomy along with them?
- Feralization is not domestication in reverse. Lots of gastronomic potential, though.
- Meanwhile…