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Potato news

A couple of Spud-U-Likes. Tuesday sees the opening of the International Symposium on Living with Potatoes (ISLP’08). Yes! And according to the conference organisers:

The objective of the ISLP’08 is to provide an international forum for sharing and exchanging information amongst the growers, associations, academicians, researchers, students, practitioners, and government who are interested in promoting the sustainability of potatoes–one of the top three staple foods.

Right. But what about bloggers? Anyone who is at the Symposium and who fancies joining the hallowed ranks of our Guest Bloggers need only send us an email.

And then there’s the wittily headlined Eyes peeled, a report in The Australian newspaper of writer Judith Elen’s potato-focused agro-tourism in the Andes, starting off at CIP, the International Potato Centre in Lima, Peru. Not just potatoes either, but a host of delicious goodies. Sent abroad to eat for her readers, what a great gig. Her conclusion:

Meanwhile, CIP continues its work in the background, conserving and researching native potatoes. The purple-fleshed varieties are especially high in antioxidants, stored in the pigment, while yellow-fleshed varieties are higher in available iron. Andean highlanders serve red, yellow (yema de huevo, egg-yolk potato) and blue in a single dish. But even along the Inca highway, some native varieties have been lost. In this, the UN’s international year of the potato, awareness is the key to keeping cultivation and research funds flowing.

Judith Elen was a guest of Centro Internacional de la Papa.

Money well spent, I’d say.

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Promoting civil disobedience one seed at a time

Luigi nibbled the World Food Garden a day or two back, but I think it merits a bit more of a chew. ((Admittedly he did also point to the link where he found it, which certainly does go into detail.)) At first sight it looks like a typically busy, typically overburdened site, with a very crowded map of all the gardeners who have already signed up. But if it delivers on what it promises, it could be a great resource. The thing that interests me most is a “Seed swap”. Alas, click on that and all you see is “Coming Soon!”. Well, I hope it is, and I hope it works, and works well.

I’ve been mulling a very similar idea here for a long time, and I even have it all figured out as far as wire-frames and flow diagrams and all that stuff goes. But I don’t speak Ruby ((Hint, hint: if you do, and want to collaborate, let me know.)) and right now I don’t have time to learn.

The need for an exchange mechanism is far, far greater in Europe than anywhere else in the world. To be honest, almost everything World Food Garden offers or is planning to offer already exists, especially in the US. All power to them, though for pulling it all together. Gardeners and small farmers can obtain the seeds of any variety they want, if it is available. European gardeners do not have the luxury of choice. A rational, effective seed swap system would cut the pointless European legislation off at the knees.

Which is exactly what it needs.

In the meantime, if you have or want seeds of something interesting, try Pat ‘n’ Steph.

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Berry go round comes round again

The latest Berry Go Round — “your favorite botanical carnival” — is up at Gravity’s Rainbow. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: blog carnivals are a good way to expose yourself to something new, and there’s some nice new botany over there. But we also need to stay on message here, so I’ll single out two that deal with edibles. Verdure celebrates the bounty of autumn, while Laurent at Seedsaside treats us to a discourse on tomatillos.

While you snack on those, a question. Are there blog carnivals that might be of interest, that we don’t know about? Share, and we’ll do two things. Submit our own stuff, and bring back anything we discover there.

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Disappearing wild potatoes mined for drought tolerance

An article in National Geographic looks at possible changes in the climate of the Andes, how they will affect potatoes, and what breeders are doing about it. The wild relatives are very much to the fore:

“The crosses we are developing between wild, drought-tolerant varieties and modern potatoes now are for the future,” said Meredith Bonierbale, senior potato breeder at the International Potato Center in Lima.

The article also quotes our friend, colleague and occasional contributor Andy Jarvis, ((Andy works for CIAT and Bioversity in Cali, Colombia.)) who recently collaborated with others on a paper which concluded that some of those very same wild relatives are themselves threatened:

“Even if we halt habitat loss, in the next 50 years, climate change could undo all of the conservation that we already have,” said Jarvis.