Over at Eat This Podcast, Jeremy has just kicked off a month of daily podcasting about wheat and bread. You have only a couple to catch up on, which is easy to do as each episode is only about 5 minutes long. We’ve had Jack Harlan harvesting wild wheat in the Kara Dag and Neanderthals eating porridge so far. I think we’ve got the polyploidy story today. Hang on to your genomes, it’s going to be quite a ride.
Nibbles: Gros Michel, Poultry photos, Pigeonpea prebreeding, Murnong, Wheat breeding, Hass, Indian forest foods, Popcorn domestication, Mustard history, Historical botanists, Barges & Bread, Samoan distilling, Kenyan brewing
- The quest for Big Mike. No, not Stormy Daniels’ latest. It’s a banana.
- Ok, I’m going to resist the temptation of making the obvious follow-up joke in connection with this gallery of beautiful chickens.
- Who needs chickens when you have pigeons. Ah, no, these are pigeonpeas.
- Australia’s answer to the potato. Unclear what the question was.
- Australia’s answer to frost-sensitive wheat: look in genebanks for resistant stuff.
- The mother of all avocados. Kind of a Hass-been, though.
- Avocado shmavocado, says India.
- Are you not entertained? Have some popcorn!
- And mustard for that hotdog. You know, like Mesolithic people did.
- History of plant collecting double feature: Bradby Blake & Frank N. Meyer.
- Listen to Jeremy on how grain made its way up the Thames.
- A lot of grain also makes its way to Ft Collins. See what I did there?
- Taro whiskey: I’ll drink to that.
- Kenyan coffee to finish things off? Maybe not for long.
Nibbles: Pine nuts, Indian rice, Chai, Amazonian encyclopedia, Sustainable markets, First cryo, Wild apples, Scurvy
- Mongolians nuts for pine nuts.
- Indians increasingly nuts for heirloom rices.
- Tea: a tale of two words.
- Wait, Mongabay does podcasts now?
- DfID backs sustainable supply chains. But is diversity considered?
- The origins of cryo.
- Student saves apple. Species, that is.
- Scurvy was not all bad? Who needs fruit.
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: Cyprus seeds, Vietnamese rice, Policy briefs, English breakfast tea, Magic mushrooms, Peanut ontology Moccasin Boots, GeoAgro, Zea archaeology, Oenoarchaology, Old ham, ICRISAT genebank, Coffee podcast, ITPGRFA, Amphicarpaea bracteata
- “It is like archaeology to me. When you save an ancient seed it is like saving a sculpture. It represents the culture, tradition and history. Different types have different traits and intense flavours, like tomatoes years ago for example.”
- Vietnamese specialty rices direct from the genebank. Totally unrelated to this NY Times video-essay on Hmong rice farming.
- Time for tea.
- Making coffee good again. Jeremy explores fair trade and Fair Trade. Do tea now, please, Cherfas.
- ‘Shrooms got magic horizontally, man.
- Why do circus peanuts taste of bananas?
- Bringing back the mouse bean. Which may or may not taste of bananas.
- Cool maize book to round off the Native American crops trifecta.
- Oh no, here’s another one. Pinning down maize domestication.
- Funky ICARDA agroclimatological app.
- REALLY old Italian wine. And something to go with it.
- ICRISAT has a genebank in Zimbabwe too.
- Plant Treaty transfers hit a milestone.
- Policy brief on policy briefs. Homework: do a killer policy brief on any of the above.