Rhubarb is a pretty interesting crop, with its steppe origins and medicinal properties and colourful appearance. But not nearly as interesting as one of its wild relatives. Plants of the desert rhubarb (Rheum palaestinum) growing in the Negev Desert have just been shown to “typically harvests 4.2 litres of water each year, while the largest plant found harvested 43.8 litres.” That’s in an area which gets 75mm of rain a year. It’s all due to the its “specially designed leaves that channel rain water to its roots.” No word on its crossability with Rheum x hybridum (R. palmatum x rhaponticum) Murray, but I’m sure it will be tried. Drought-resistant rhubarb crumble, anyone?
Agricultural biodiversity weblogger awarded prize
Our friend, colleague and occasional contributor Andy Jarvis has just won GBIF’s prestigious Ebbe Nielsen Prize for 2009 for “combining biosystematics and biodiversity informatics research in an exciting and novel way”. A lot of his work has been on the spatial analysis of the geographic distributions of crop wild relatives, with a view to developing strategies and priorities for their conservation, in particular in the context of climate change. A lot, but far from all: Andy is nothing if not versatile, and his interests extend to the whole of agrobiodiversity. A recent interview with Andy, and others, tries to answer the question “why maps?”. Congratulations to Andy!
Nibbles: Tsetse, Warty pumpkins, Cattle origins, Crop mobs
- Tripping up trypanosomiasis: “It is a poverty fly.”
- Pumpkin patent squashed: “This is like trying to patent all trees with twisted limbs.”
- Indonesian bovines fingerprinted: “…the famous ‘racing bulls‘ from Madura descended from banteng cows.”
- Cropmobbing. Sounds like fun. Via.
The slow march of domestication
Kris’s Archaeology Blog at About.com has a short post summarizing recent work which suggests that there may have been a gap of a millennium between domestication of, and dependence on, broomcorn millet (Panicum miliaceum) in China — and similar gaps for a number of other crops in different centres of origin.
What this is telling us, is that hunter-gatherers took the initial steps towards farming many generations before their descendants became dependent on domestic crops. Interesting, don’t you think?
Indeed.
Wild pig doing just fine
Professor John Fa, director of conservation science at the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, one of the partners in the Pygmy Hog Conservation Programme (PHCP), described the pigs as “enigmatic.”
Maybe they just don’t want to get swine flu. I mean, look what happened to Khanzir.