You remember this book, right? We enthused about it over a year ago when it first came out.
An old friend, Frederik van Oudenhoven, and his friend and colleague Jamila Haider, are deep in the proofs of what looks to be a wonderful book. With Our Own Hands “tells, for the first time, the cultural and agricultural history of the Afghan and Tajik Pamirs, one of the world’s least known and most isolated civilisations”. Should be a great read, with stunning photographs to accompany the local recipes, essays, stories and poetry. Better yet, generous donors are allowing 1800 copies to travel back to the Pamirs to be given to communities, schools, cooks and libraries.
Well, Fred and Jamila have now won the 2016 Gourmand World Cookbook Award, the Oscars of the cookbook world. You can see photos on the book’s Facebook page. And all without mentioning superfoods. Congratulations!
And by the way, you can listen to Fred talk about the book with Jeremy on Eat This Podcast.
Nice to see what I hope is the beginning of a “superfoods” backlash, spearheaded by Sense About Science and their Ask For Evidence campaign, together with the British Dietetic Association:
Bioversity’s DG Ann Tutwiler gave the compellingly titled presentation On NOT finding the world’s next superfood at the Kew shindig a couple of weeks back, but, annoyingly, undermined her own message on the importance of agrobiodiversity for diverse diets by repeatedly using the term she was supposedly debunking. ((In my view, based on the slides only. I wasn’t there, so perhaps the message came across more clearly live. Please do tell me if I’m wrong.))
Sorry for not pointing it out at the time, but the CIMMYT genebank really went all out for the International Day of Biodiversity last week, with this nifty video on Facebook…
…and something I believe is called a slate. Whatever will they think of next? Before you know it, genebanks will be doing customer follow-up surveys or something. No, wait…
Roxbury Russet (1912), by Ellen Isham Schutt, 1873-1955. U.S. Department of Agriculture Pomological Watercolor Collection. Rare and Special Collections, National Agricultural Library, Beltsville, MD 20705Apples have been a significant part of American culture for centuries. Native Americans used wild species that are native to the U.S., and colonists brought European and Asian apple cultivars with them when they settled. Early apple cultivars were brought to the U.S. from the United Kingdom, France, Russia, Germany, and other European countries. However, most of the historic American apple cultivars originated as seedlings likely grown from seed brought from elsewhere or from the imported cultivars. Some of the earliest named apple cultivars originating in the United States were High Top Sweet, Roxbury Russet, and Rhode Island Greening, all dating from the early to mid-1600s. But how many of them were there, and what has happened to them?
In this work, historic books, publications, and nursery catalogs were used to identify the cultivars that were propagated and grown in the United States prior to 1908. Synonyms, introduction dates, and source country for 891 historic apple cultivars were recorded in total. We then classified them based on their availability over time and popularity in nursery catalogs. We considered the highest priority cultivars for conservation to be those that were actively propagated and sold through multiple nurseries, as well as those that were grown and documented in more than one of the three time periods recorded (pre-1830, 1830-1869, and 1870-1907).
We found that, overall, 90% of the 150 highest priority cultivars are currently available as a result of conservation efforts in genebanks, private collections, and nurseries. Overall, it’s quite remarkable (and likely due in part to the longevity of apple trees) that these trees remain available, since the USDA National Plant Germplasm System Clonal Repository, where apple cultivars are conserved, wasn’t established until the 1980s. Cultivars that are not currently protected within genebanks but considered high priority were identified and suggested for inclusion in genebanks in the future. There were 51 high priority cultivars identified as possible additions to genebank conservation efforts, many of which may be available from the National Fruit Collection in Brogdale, England, and the Temperate Orchard Conservancy in Oregon.
This information will be useful for the many landholders who have historic apple trees on their properties. Identification efforts may make use of lists of historic cultivars to help determine identities based on either DNA fingerprinting or phenotypic traits.
Please everyone run on over to Jeremy’s Eat This Podcast and listen to his masterly appreciation of the life and career of legendary Italian wheat breeder Nazareno Strampelli, The True Father of the First Green Revolution, on the 150th anniversary of his birthday.
Nazareno Strampelli, an Italian plant breeder, exactly foreshadowed Borlaug’s work by about four decades. His wheats doubled production in Italy and beyond and were crucial to the second green revolution ushered in by Borlaug. He was born on 29 May 1866, 150 years ago as I write this. He deserves to be better known (as do all plant breeders, actually).
