There’s a one-hour interview with Luisa Maffi of Terralingua online at Agricultural Innovations on the connections between biodiversity, culture and language. Fascinating.
Was sunflower domesticated in Mexico or what?
I don’t know much about sunflower. That’s obvious enough from the cavalier fashion in which a recent Nibble of mine referred to a press release on a PNAS paper on sunflower domestication by David Lentz and others. ((David L. Lentz, Mary DeLand Pohl, José Luis Alvarado, Somayeh Tarighat and Robert Bye. Sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.) as a pre-Columbian domesticate in Mexico. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105: 6232-6237; published online as 10.1073/pnas.0711760105. The paper is behind a paywall but the supplementary material is available and gives a taste. Some nice pix.)) Briefly, that paper presented a range of archaeological, linguistic, ethnographic and ethnohistoric evidence for the domestication of sunflower in Mexico by 2600 BC. This would complement a separate, independent, well-attested domestication in the Mississippi Valley. That’s important not only academically but also for the insights it would give into genetic structure within the species, and hence possible breeding strategies.
But it looks like I unwittingly walked into a bit of a controversy. It seems things are a bit more complex than the press release made out. In a 2007 short communication in GRACE, the great Charles Heiser reverses himself with regards to some archaeobotanical material he had previously identified as a sunflower achene and as a result comes out against the Mexican domestication for the crop first advocated by Lentz in 2001. The available molecular evidence seems to support Heiser.
I don’t know much about sunflower. But after today, I know a little bit more. And I’ll be keeping an eye on this academic spat to learn more.
Another source of seeds
Aspen Edge from Semilla Besada contacted us, saying “we collect, sow and save heirloom seeds, predominantly organic, in order to maintain biodiversity and farmer’s autonomy. Â I should like to be listed as a source of heirloom seeds in Spain, although these can only be supplied when they are surplus to our requirements”.
Despite the caveat, we’re happy to list them on our Seeds page, and to use the opportunity to ask for other suggestions of sources you think we should list.
Talking about neglected crops
AGFAX Radio was at the recent Arusha meeting on neglected crops and has a whole bunch of interviews online (with transcripts):
- National treasures
- International viewpoints
- Nutritional benefits
- Social aspects
- Why Tanzania is ahead
- Mighty baobab
- From weed to cash crop: Amaranth
- Improving the varieties
- The farmer’s view
- The market for underutilized vegetables
Don’t forget the follow-up e-conference is still on.
Mo’ better banana
Dan Koeppel, the man who wrote “Banana,” noted our little post yesterday. And thanks to that, I found his web site, which I confess I didn’t search for originally. Despite being monospecific, this is one I will be watching because the banana is truly a microcosm of much that interests me. I’ve added it to our blogroll too.