Category: Vegetables

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Vegetable starter kits for Thailand

A short piece in AVRDC’s latest monthly newsletter tells the story of how that institute is producing thousands of “vegetable seed kits” with support from the government of Taiwan and handing them over to a university and the army in Thailand for distribution to people affected by flooding and landslides in a couple of different regions of that country.

It’s an interesting idea, but as usual the article left me wanting to know more. Like how were the varieties of mungbean, okra and kangkong chosen? In fact, how were the crops chosen? And did all the thousands of kits have the same varieties? And, more fundamentally, how did AVRDC know that vegetable seeds were needed in the first place? Seed provision in the wake of disasters is a complicated business.

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Private cabbages go public in North Carolina

Of course the obligatory conspiracy theories have surfaced, but Monsanto’s gift of its extensive cabbage germplasm collection to North Carolina’s State University’s Plants for Human Health Institute seems genuine enough.

“Monsanto is pleased to contribute cabbage germplasm to N.C. State University’s Plants for Human Health Institute at the N.C. Research Campus,” said Consuelo Madere, Monsanto’s Global Vegetable and Asia Commercial lead. “We sell cabbage seed under our Seminis brand in several world areas,” she said, “and we are delighted that the Institute will be working at NCRC to develop cabbage varieties well suited to the local production needs in North Carolina. It’s a great example of public and private efforts coming together at the campus.”

That might suggest that Monsanto would look askance at the material getting too far beyond North Carolina, but Dr Allan Brown, the breeder with the Plants for Human Health Institute who will be managing the collection, assures me there are no strings attached with regard to availability. He has a long job ahead checking on the viability of all the accessions, and regenerating and multiplying the material as needed, but he sees no impediment to it eventually being widely available, though he cannot put a date on that.

That’s good news for cabbage breeders around the world. If I were a proper reporter I would ask Monsanto why they didn’t make the donation to the USDA’s Northeast Regional PI Station at Geneva, New York, which manages plenty of cabbages, and which would then very willingly have made the material available to NCSU, and everyone else to boot. Maybe I will anyway.

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Brainfood: Biotechnology, Pollinators, Mulberries, Rice blast, Locavores, Roselle, Cassava, Protected areas, Traditional vegetables, Vitis, European diversity

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Religion, diet and nutrition

We tend not to set too much store by religion around these parts, so a letter in response  ((Scroll down till you see A Mormon approach.)) to The Economist’s recent pieces on nutrition piqued our interest. It read, in part:

In the March issue of their magazine, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints reported on a food initiative which has taught many members to garden, even in small, urban spaces, and with whatever containers they can find. Started in 2009, these people have gone on to teach others in their communities how to increase their nutritional intake—and self-reliance—with just seeds, soil and sunlight.

Let me Google that for you. Better yet, having Googled it, let me fillet out the article in question and make it available all on its own. Turns out that not only are Mormons keen on urban and container gardening for diversity and nutrition, they’ve been so for quite a while. A former US secretary of Agriculture, Ezra Taft Benson, was President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and set out a very familiar vision of how to prepare for the Days of Tribulation:

Get together with others and seek permission to use a vacant lot for a garden, or rent a plot of ground and grow your gardens. Some elders quorums have done this as a quorum, and all who have participated have reaped the benefits of a vegetable and fruit harvest and the blessings of cooperation and family involvement. Many families have dug up lawn space for gardens.

That sounds like a modern manifesto to me. Of course, there’s an appeal to authority too:

President Brigham Young said, “If you are without bread, how much wisdom can you boast, and of what real utility are your talents, if you cannot procure for yourselves and save against a day of scarcity those substances designed to sustain your natural lives?”

One to ponder. Meanwhile, I wonder whether those members of the Mormon faith who heeded their presidents’ advice saw any impact on their nutrition?

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Onions of the Southwest

There may be a chili in the photograph which goes along with the NY Times piece on Gary Nabhan’s new book “Chasing Chiles: Hot Spots Along the Pepper Trail,” but I have it from a reliable authority ((Thanks, Colin.)) that most of the plants are i’itoi onions. Which have a fascinating story of their own.

Its journey to the Southwest began in the late 1600’s when Jesuit missionaries coming from Spain shepherded the onion across the ocean. It adapted wonderfully to the arid environment and was soon a valuable food source and also used for medicinal and ceremonial purposes. The first harvest was completed on the soil rich “bajadas” or slopes of the Baboquivari Mountain. This mountain was considered the birthplace of the Hohokam people, the ancestors of today’s Tohono O’odham (The Desert People). I’itoi,or Elder Brother, was the creator of the desert people and still resides watching over his people high up in the mountain in a cave where few can ever visit.