Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

March 8, 2022March 8, 2022

The three S’s of medieval salads

There’s a thread on the Twitter feed of The Delicious Legacy Podcast about that holy trinity of somewhat weird medieval root vegetables: skirret, salsify and scorzonera.

THREAD:
Skirret, Salsify, Scorzonera…
These are root vegetables, once popular, and eaten in almost every meal, in a pottage style stew mainly; it was the staple of many farmers…
What happened to them? Why don't we eat them any more?
1/x pic.twitter.com/V3iqLid9LZ

— The Delicious Legacy Podcast (@DeliciousLegacy) March 6, 2022

If you don’t like the bird site, check it out on ThreadReader.

I’m not sure I agree with everything in there. For example, potato and sweetpotato can absolutely have complex flavours, and I doubt any of these three admittedly now marginal roots could ever have been described as staples. But it’s nice to be reminded of crops which are going out of fashion, and could presumably come back into it, given a little push.

March 8, 2022

Want to regenerate vegetables for CGN?

Interesting to see the Dutch national genebank outsource the regeneration of some of its vegetables to the private sector:

…CGN is looking for greenhouse growers who have expertise and greenhouse space available for the paid cultivation of vegetables (e.g. tomato, lettuce, spinach, melon) for seed production. The number of plants to be grown per seed sample varies per crop and ranges from 10-80 plants per seed sample.

Will be interesting to see if the market is there.

March 7, 2022March 16, 2022

Brainfood: Ukrainian edition

Characteristics of the resistance of spring wheat varieties to pathogens of leaf diseases typical for the zone of the Right-Bank Forest-Steppe of Ukraine. 3 of 19 varieties from the national genebank could be useful.
The adaptability of soft spring wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) varieties. 3 of 10 accessions from the national genebank had high general adaptive ability.
Investigation of the Carbohydrates of Camelina sativa (L.) Crantz and Camelina microcarpa Andrz. Levels of monosaccharides quantified in material from the national genebank.
Characteristic of morphological traits and biochemical indicators in Linum pubescens. A flax wild relative with ornamental potential.
Inheritance of productivity and its elements by hybrids and lines of common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.). Lots of interesting variation to investigate further among F1-F6 hybrids.
Combining ability of self-pollined sunflower lines – parents of confectionery hybrids. Tasty material derived from genebank accessions.
Оil content in chickpea seeds of the national collection of Ukraine. Could do with more variation among the 43 accessions tested from the national genebank. But the whole collection is pretty important.
Plant genetic resources of Ukrainian Podillia. Results of a 2019 collecting expedition by the national genebank.
Genetic relatedness of sweet cherry (Prunus avium L.) cultivars from Ukraine determined by microsatellite markers. Ukrainian cultivars combine genetic material of local, western European, and Caucasian origin.
Characteristics of different varieties of the pea (Pisum sativum L.) in the zone of the Southern Forest-Steppe of Ukraine. Some of 30 newly introduced pea varieties might be useful in increasing productivity.
Progress in Japanese quinces breeding in Ukraine. Since 1913!
Molecular diversity in the Ukrainian melon collection as revealed by AFLPs and microsatellites. 38 accessions fall into the 3 standard genetic groups.
The history of sunflowers in Ukraine. Not peer-reviewed, but anyway.

March 4, 2022March 4, 2022

White strawberry privileged

Great piece from the always reliable Gastro Obscura on Chile’s white strawberry. It truly has all the canonical agrobiodiversity tropes: interdependence for diversity, the importance of wild relatives, the downside of reforestation, genetic erosion and how chefs can help. Oh, and biopiracy. The only thing that’s missing, in fact, is genebanks. Can’t have everything. But it could be used to teach the subject.

March 1, 2022February 28, 2022

Cropland could be almost halved

I’m recycling this from Jeremy’s latest newsletter, with permission. So I don’t have to write something on the paper in question myself, as I originally planned.

I’m honestly not sure what to make of this recent paper: Global cropland could be almost halved: Assessment of land saving potentials under different strategies and implications for agricultural markets. The gist of it seems to be that if we were able to grow crops more productively (closing the yield gap, as it is known) we would need less land, reduce crop prices, and cure the common cold.

Not quite, obviously, but this kind of model-based approach to transforming global agriculture seems to me to be long on possibilities and short on practicalities. Of course, the modellers could point out that they are merely showing the way and that others will have to make the decision to take us down the road. Points, too, for figuring out how all this might affect prices and global trade flows. However, I remain befuddled and bemused, as I was when I first encountered this sort of study in 2009 and then again in 2017.