Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

Mary Winfree Found our post “Churros and peaches in the Canyon de Chelly” useful:

My back yard holds a sacred place and cemetery, we found it when a neighbor tried to build a road right up to my back door and the bones came up. We brought in Cadaver dogs who revealed a whole cemetery. It was a blessing in disguise because when we went to replant the bones of my little Indian Grandmother, there were more bones from the same tribe, that needed a home. They had been buried and then disturbed by a big hiway, and no place had been found for them. Now they will join the ones in my yard. We are holding a homecoming party for them. Songs both sad and happy, a BBQ and where they are replanted they are planting peach trees – now I know what that means…

We’re glad we were able to help a little.

This is too perfect for words. You’ll remember that I was a little confused by a strange report on a GM purple tomato that somehow wasn’t GM because it was bred from GM parents. Or something. Matthew now reveals that it is even more confusing than I first thought:

You’ll notice that the photo of the “GMO” purple tomato is from Oregon State University. It’s actually a photo of one experimental line from Jim Myers classical breeding program that last year released a new purple commercial variety. Here’s the press release they took it from: http://horticulture.oregonstate.edu/purple_tomato_faq.

We’ve written about those GM purple tomatoes before, and about Oregon State’s breeding programme. Nothing since then has changed my mind on the topic.