Root and tuber staples get a bit of a raw deal in agricultural biodiversity circles. They’re incredibly important to many cultures and in many agricultural systems around the world, but difficult to conserve and difficult to breed. So the discourse does tend to be dominated by seed crops. Which is why it’s so great to read — in the mainstream media — of a sweet potato enthusiast in Japan and of a fascinating traditional yam ceremony in Papua New Guinea.
TV news bites on “eat insects”
 We weren’t the only ones to be tickled by efforts to promote minilivestock.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19ztpXqqhcgFrom a cold and wet Addis Ababa
It’s a wise grape that knows its own father
In the annals of plant breeding there are many stories that have achieved the status of Truth. Like the discovery of the original pink grapefruit, the parent tree marked forever with a P carved in its trunk, or the Red Delicious apple found in a ditch somewhere. Not quite so well known is the tale of Cardinal grapes. It is a delicious table grape that, so the story goes, was bred in 1939 at the Horticultural Field Station in Fresno, California, by E. Snyder and F. Harmon, by crossing Flame Tokay and Ribier.
Alas, it ain’t so.
Flame Tokay is normally considered a synonym — just another name — for Ahmer Bou Amer, an Algerian table grape. In the course of examining the DNA of a bunch of Mediterranean grape varieties, A. Akkak, P. Bocacci and R. Rotta ((Cardinal grape parentage: a case of a breeding mistake. Genome 50(3): 325-328 (2007) doi:10.1139/G06-145)) discovered that Flame Tokay could not possibly have been a parent of Cardinal, though they cannot show who is either. I don’t imagine E. Snyder or F. Harmon is still around to tell us what really happened. The researchers also prove that Flame Tokay is not merely a synonym of Ahmer Bou Amer but a mutant in at least one gene.
And in other grape news, two scientists in Switzerland are warning that the American Vitis rootstocks that saved the European wine industry from Phylloxera are threatening the survival of native wild European grapevines. ((Arrigo N, Arnold C (2007) Naturalised Vitis Rootstocks in Europe and Consequences to Native Wild Grapevine. PLoS ONE 2(6): e521. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0000521)) Nils Arrigo and Claire Arnold say that:
The regrouping of naturalised rootstocks in interconnected populations tends to create active hybrid swarms of rootstocks. The rootstocks show characters of invasive plants. The spread of naturalised rootstocks in the environment, the acceleration of the decline of the European wild grapevine, and the propagation of genes of viticultural interest in natural populations are potential consequences that should be kept in mind when undertaking appropriate management measures.
In other words, watch out.
The American rootstocks have already displaced wild grapes from the flood plains of the Rhone, and there may be worse in store.
Indians urged to grow seaweed
Indian fisherfolk are being trained as seaweed farmers in an effort to improve their incomes, according to a report in The Hindu. It says that seaweed has a market as a source of raw materials and that “seaweed cultivation would not harm the environment”. Seaweed can be used for food, fertilizer, medicines and other purposes, including biofuel, apparently. Fisherfolk on India’s coast are suffering as a result of indiscriminate exploitation.