The redoutable Coconut Google Group has a great story from Roland Bourdeix about the Philippines’ makapuno coconut variety, ((Now, you may have to join the Google Group to read Roland’s post. But that would be no bad thing.)) drawing from an article in the Philippine Star. Makapuno nuts have a delicious and very valuable jelly instead of water, but can’t germinate. A makapuno palm will only have 15-20% or so makapuno fruits. The only way to get makapuno nuts is to plant a normal coconut from a palm with makapuno fruits and harvest that precious 15-20%. But that meets only 3% of demand. So in the 1960s Dr Emerita de Guzman came up with a way of rescuing makapuno embryos in tissue culture. When she planted the resulting seedlings, all the coconuts were makapuno. There are now nine labs in the Philippines churning out makapuno seedlings, but they’re expensive and few farmers can afford to buy them. I’ll let Roland tell the rest of the story, but here’s a little spoiler to whet your appetite: tissue culture makapuno palms were planted on a kind of artificial island in Thailand and something wonderful happened there…
Free rice
From our friends at the Lubin Library, news of a way to have fun, gain bragging rights, and do good. Go to Free Rice and tell the web site what words mean. The web site says they’ll send rice to hungry people, 10 grains per word. I hope they do, because I’m a naive, trusting type of guy.
As for the bragging, I just donated 400 grains of rice, guessed “santori” correctly, have learned the true meaning of “demimonde,” which I have been misusing, and drew stumps at “chaffer.”
Go. Do better. Comment here.
Nothing to do with agrobiodiversity (mind you, they don’t say what kind of rice, or rices …) but some things are worth noting even so.
Molokai farmers get a taste of taro diversity
A fine and detailed report on a taro diversity day held at the University of Hawaii’s field station near Molokai. The report makes clear why field genebanks need to exist, the threats to genebanks in general and taro in particular, and the vital links between culture and agriculture.
Fine beans
We just received a message from Christine, a reader in New Zealand, who hopes ultimately to do a roundup of seed-saving efforts down there for us. In the meantime, she has a question:
Yesterday I sowed Fin de Bagnol bean seeds, an heirloom French variety. As I did so I wondered what the name meant – it seemed strange to have ‘End’ in a seed name. I did a spot of googling to try and find an answer, but no luck.
Maybe you have a French contact who knows?
Indeed, maybe we do. Meantime, I think that fin in this case means “fine” or “slender” rather than “end”. There are other French beans with the same word; Deuil Fin Precoce for one, which is early (precocious).
So my guess is that this is a fine, slender bean of the Bagnols, but whether it is a Bagnol family, or the rather fine Château de Bagnols (which might be linked to the family) I cannot say. Probably the Château.
But maybe someone out there knows for sure.
Simposio de Recursos Genéticos para América Latina y el Caribe
Greetings from Mexico DF. I’m here for SIRGEALC, which is always a great opportunity to meet up with old friends working on agricultural biodiversity in the Americas, and see what they’ve been up to lately. I’ll try to blog about the highlights as the week goes on.