- Saving Dhofar’s frankincense tree. Evocative things they are too.
- The rich may have trouble getting into heaven, but they manage more agrobiodiversity. At least of rice. At least in Nepal.
- Gotta be careful with niche modeling in mountain areas. Well, duh.
- New Pacific food leaflets from SPC.
- Ok, how weird is it that I have a personal connection of sorts to all of the above? Probably not much.
- Ex situ not enough for wild rice. Say it ain’t so!
- The evolution of coffee.
- “If the rains do not fall we may face problems with certain crops.” Right.
- Network on natural fibres proposed by Industree Craft Foundation and the Commonwealth Secretariat. Sounds like fun.
- Screening lactic acid strains for sorghum beer making. Well, kinda. Somebody please fund this vital research!
Nibbles: School Gardens, Foods
- School gardens. Ho hum. In Uruguay!
- 10 foods for the future. Yeah, if you can’t tell the difference between 1 and 9. Or 2 and 7.
Forest gardens rediscovered
A salutary tale from Fred Bahnson over on the Nourishing the Planet blog. He describes how the farmers of Quintana Roo in Mexico managed to recover from disastrous advice. More than 15 years ago, government extension agents told the farmers to grow pitaya, one of the epiphytic cacti also known as dragonfruit. Unfortunately the extension agents knew only one way to grow them, on concrete and wire trellises. And that collapsed, leaving the farmers high and dry.
Bahson relates how, instead of giving up, the farmers adapted their traditional milpa system to grow pitaya, a story with a very happy ending, at least for the farmer Bahnson visited:
On his three hectares he harvests around 12 tons of dragonfruit per year. At $1/kilo, he’s earning $12,000 annually, almost double Mexico’s median annual household income of $7,297. And all that food coming from his milpa means a lower grocery bill than most city dwellers.
The “experts” have apparently returned, to learn how the farmers did it.
Tracking down wild aubergines in China
Sandy Knapp is a botanist at the Natural History Museum in London. She’s currently in the field in China investigating the domestication of aubergines with Wang JinXiu from the Institute of Botany in Beijing. You can follow their exploits on her blog, which features on the museum’s NaturePlus compendium of online fora.
Nibbles: Corn, Saffron, Pacific, Carrots, Food, Quarantine, Medicinal plants
- “Can corn be taught to fix its own nitrogen?” Probably not.
- Many saffron clones identical shock.
- New Agriculturist on agrobiodiversity conservation and use in the Pacific in general and Pohnpei in particular. Go Local!
- An idiosyncratic take on carrot diversity and history.
- The Indigenous Food Systems Network has a new website. h/t PAR
- Landscape of Quarantine, an exhibition that addresses, among other things, the spread of pests and diseases.
- Semillas Sagradas — Sacred Seeds.