Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

May 18, 2016May 19, 2016

A genebank in central Madrid

Had a nice afternoon out at the Real Jardín Botánico in Madrid last week, offspring in tow (who thankfully didn’t complain too much). It goes back to the late 18th century, and it’s beautifully laid out, and indeed located, though a cool and wet afternoon in early May did not show it off at its best. Anyway, there were a few nice wild Allium specimens out.

18695s

But what really caught my attention were the alley of local olive varieties…

73213s

…and, to a slightly lesser extent, the rows of local grapes.

42046s

I say “to a lesser extent” because some of the grape specimens seemed decidedly ropey to me. But maybe they’ll look better in the summer. Interestingly, the botanic garden does not feature in WIEWS as a genebank. Which it should, as it clearly is, and has been for a while, if the size of those olives is anything to go by.

May 17, 2016

Featured: Butter museum

Jeremy is happy:

…good to see The Butter Museum on the long list, not least because my latest effort at Eat This Podcast is A brief history of Irish butter.

But not entirely, and to know why you have to read the full comment.

May 17, 2016May 17, 2016

Food and plant resources roundup

A couple of meta-resources today. First, a handy database of botanical illustrations, with thanks to Mark Nesbitt of Kew for the tip:

Plantillustrations.org is a non-commercial website and will not trouble you with irritating advertisements or ask you for donations. It provides a searchable index so that you can easily find plant illustrations by using accepted or synonymous botanical names. The database is copyrighted but most illustrations can be used freely under the Creative Commons License. Please visit the website of the original contributors for further details. You can find them on the left side of the HD illustration page. If you want to use photographs please ask Max Antheunisse or contact Jan Koeman.

Second, a list of food museums from the Oxford Symposium on Food & Cookery:

Symposiasts and followers of our Facebook page responded enthusiastically when I asked about their favourite food museums. There is, in fact, a searchable online listing of some 1400 such museums compiled by Shirley Cherkasky and friends at http://foodhistorynews.com/directory.html.

But for the fun of it, here is a rather more selective listing of the ones that our symposiasts and Facebook followers came up with. Feel free to suggest others through your comments! My personal favourites are The Endangered Cake Museum and The Burnt Food Museum.

Yeah, I know. There goes your afternoon.

May 16, 2016May 31, 2016

Brainfood: Banana GWAS, Yeast genebanks, Hybrid sorghum, How to intensify ecologically, Med pastures, Food services, Neolithic transition, Ploughing the savanna

A Genome-Wide Association Study on the Seedless Phenotype in Banana (Musa spp.) Reveals the Potential of a Selected Panel to Detect Candidate Genes in a Vegetatively Propagated Crop. One strong candidate gene, from 6 possible regions. And here’s the light version.
Yeast culture collections in the twenty-first century: New opportunities and challenges. Pretty much the same as plant genebanks.
Genetic variation in sorghum as revealed by phenotypic and SSR markers: implications for combining ability and heterosis for grain yield. Possible parents for hybrids identified.
Actionable knowledge for ecological intensification of agriculture. Look at the landscape, articulate trade-offs and don’t forget the social dynamics.
Taxonomic and functional diversity in Mediterranean pastures: Insights on the biodiversity–productivity trade-off. Somebody mention trade-offs?
Are the major imperatives of food security missing in ecosystem services research? Pretty much.
Reproductive trade-offs in extant hunter-gatherers suggest adaptive mechanism for the Neolithic expansion. Agriculture got you laid, but then killed you.
High carbon and biodiversity costs from converting Africa’s wet savannahs to cropland. Bad idea all round.

May 15, 2016May 16, 2016

Talking non-biotech strawberries and citrus

If the recent post on the UC Davis Strawberry Wars whetted your appetite, the Talking Biotech podcast can help with a leisurely run-through the history of the crop and efforts to breed it from Kevin Folta and his guest, Dr Jim Hancock, strawberry breeder from Michigan State University. Where things are not as wild as at Davis, apparently. It’s a fascinating story of global interdependence in genetic resources, and the importance of crop wild relatives. And, it turns out the first scientifically bred crop variety was a strawberry. Since I’m at it, the episode on citrus was pretty good too. But Kevin, how about some more explicit recognition of the importance of genetic resources collections (i.e. genebanks) in all this work?