Category: Uncategorized

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Bad news from Tehran

In addition to everything else, it seems that the Turkman horse is under threat of extinction. ((And, yes, I know that this is no joking matter. But still.)) The problem seems to be interbreeding with Throughbreds, and owners unwilling to risk pure-bred Turkmen horses, which are expensive, in races where there is a risk of injury and prize money is low. According to one expert:

Iranian horses have unique features such as smartness, nobility, special physical conditions and high endurance level which cannot be observed in any of the imported horses.

Among the proposals to save the Turkmen horse are a genebank (not sure how that would work) and a breed register, which would probably require DNA testing for individuals.

The Byerly Turk
The Byerly Turk

One thing puzzles me. In the very restricted genetic bottleneck that resulted in the English Thoroughbred is a fine animal known as The Byerly Turk. Was it really a Turk? Wikipedia thinks not. More to the point, one can only be grateful that the English did not decry all that messy genetic pollution that gave rise to the English Thoroughbred.

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Language and the spread of agriculture

Whatever you think about the link between the spread of languages and that of farming — and the correspondence between the two postulated by Bellwood is controversial — there is no denying the similarities between a map of language diversity in a recent paper

languages
and that of the places where agriculture originated.

origin
At least in Africa, Near East and New Guinea. The dissimilarities, in particular in South and East Asia, are just as striking.

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Lamb and veg

Some of the best eating I’ve done in recent years was in Portland, Maine, so it was not surprise to read of an effort to bring chefs and farmers together to preserve heirloom vegetable varieties. This was an early report in what all parties hope will be a long collaboration, and I wish them well.

“Our goals are to raise awareness of the issues surrounding heirloom vegetables, build markets, and with this pilot project, build a template to do similar things throughout the country.”

I hope they’ll check the names of all the varieties they’re growing; I spotted at least one mistake in the few varieties named in the article. And while it doesn’t talk about the island-reared lamb that Portland is so famous for, Danny at Rurality posted a link to a campaign to save rare breeds of sheep, by eating them.

Use it or lose it applies to Westerners with fat wallets as much as to the rest of the world.

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Aluka on agrobiodiversity

Aluka is an international, collaborative initiative building an online digital library of scholarly resources from and about Africa. ‘Aluka’, is derived from a Zulu word meaning ‘to weave’, reflecting Aluka’s commitment to connect resources and scholars from around the world. In 2008, we announced that Aluka is uniting with JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization building trusted digital archives for the global scholarly community.

An amazing resource, which has a section on African plants, including crops and their wild relatives, e.g. Sorghum.

Access to some things (e.g. photos of herbarium specimens) “is provided through participation by not-for-profit institutions of higher education, as well as secondary schools, public libraries, museums, and other research or cultural institutions across the globe.” Is anyone out there a member? Tell us about it.

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Agrobiodiversity everywhere, if you look

My weekend reading included two pieces that I felt sure would prove well written and engaging, but which I frankly did not think would yield much in the way of agrobiodiversity fodder. Turns out I was wrong, at least on the latter point.

Felipe Fernandez-Armesto’s review of the Encyclopedia of Exploration 1850 to 1940 by Raymond John Howgego is indeed a model of its type: informative, stimulating and charming. It also includes a reference to the late nineteenth-century Swiss ethnobotanist of Paraguay Moisés Bertoni, who described Stevia rebaudiana, a controversial sugar substitute. And another to the Société Impériale Zoologique d’Acclimatation, which had a famous birthday boy as a loyal member in its early days. ((It’s now the Société nationale de protection de la nature.)) A Colonel Henry Wayne apparently won the society’s gold medal for his efforts to introduce camels to the US.

The second piece that intrigued me over the weekend was an article by Matt Jenkins in the Smithsonian Magazine about the elite pilots who guide ships through the treacherous, sand-barred mouth of the Columbia River in Oregon. What’s the agrobiodiversity angle? Well, Portland and other upriver ports are the the main gateway in the US for its wheat and barley exports. The river pilots can shut down the entrance to the river if conditions are too bad, but, to quote one of them:

“When we shut down the bar for two days, trains are backed up all the way into the Midwest. And just like a traffic jam on the freeway, once you clear the wreck, it takes a long time for it to smooth out again.”

It’s a great image. The world’s interdependence for agricultural products ((And coincidentally I came across a great graphical representation of that yesterday, thanks to blogging machine Tom Barnett.)) resting on the judgement of a dozen or so salty sea dogs in the Pacific Northwest.