So is organic better or what? Not, according to the latest salvo in the debate. Last March a report from the Organic Trade Association in the US said that organic produce had on average a 25% nutritional advantage over the “normal” stuff. But now Prof. Joseph Rosen at Rutgers says in a report for the American Council on Science and Health that the previous study was flawed and the advantage disappears when you compare like with strictly like. That may well be, of course, but a recent paper shows that there are other benefits of going organic. The ecological footprint of organic Tuscan wine was found to be half that of a conventionally-produced tipple. No word on the relative health benefits.
Quality management in genebanks
You may remember a nibble a few weeks back about CIP’s ISO accreditation for its germplasm acquisition, management and distribution operations. The press release stated that:
This is the first time that a genebank has gained accreditation anywhere in the world.
I was a bit skeptical about this initially, as I knew that some European genebanks had also put in place a formal quality management system. But, on reading about the subject on the website of the Dutch genebank, it seems that what they have achieved is certification, which I have a feeling is quite different to accreditation. Maybe some expert out there will put me out of my misery.
Anyway, I was reminded of all this by a paper just out in Theriogenology which looks at managing the quality of the 127,479 samples in the US swine germplasm collection at Ft Collins.
A tomato museum. In Tomatopolis of the World, MS
North America’s largest native edible fruit
What is it? Asimina triloba, apparently. There’s a workshop coming up in a couple of months, at Kentucky State. Anyone going?
Italian silk-making
We’ve blogged several times about silk-making in Africa, but this is somewhat closer (at least physically) to home (at least for now). Smithsonian Magazine has a short article on sericulture which includes a reference to a museum devoted to the subject in Como. Turns out that northern Italian city used to be a hub of silk-making. Who knew.
Incidentally, we’ve also blogged about butterfly farming before. And there’s a post just out at mongbay on what they’re doing at the Iwokrama reserve in Guyana. But an article in The Independent describes something altogether more grandiose: “the world’s biggest ‘walkthrough butterfly experience.'”