Agrobiodiversity is crops, livestock, foodways, microbes, pollinators, wild relatives …
If you were not satisfied with my glib summary of the paper “Large-scale whole-genome resequencing unravels the domestication history of Cannabis sativa” last August, the indefatigable Dorian Fuller has you covered.
Bottom line: incomplete sampling and imprecise dating mean that multiple domestications of the crop in China at the same time as, or even after, those of millets should not be ruled out just yet.
Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree establishing the National Center for Plant Genetic Resources.
Wait, isn’t there one already?
The President decided to establish such a center on the basis of the Federal Research Center “All-Russian Institute of Plant Genetic Resources named after N. I. Vavilov.”
Wait, what does “on the basis” mean?
In order to ensure coordination of the activities of the National Center for Plant Genetic Resources, I decide:
1. Establish an Interdepartmental Commission on the Formation, Preservation and Use of Collections of Plant Genetic Resources…
Ah, ok.
The Interdepartmental Commission on the Formation, Preservation and Use of Collections of Plant Genetic Resources (hereinafter referred to as the Commission) was established to ensure coordination of the activities of the National Center for Plant Genetic Resources (hereinafter referred to as the National Center).
So what is this National Centre though?
The Chairman of the Commission is the director of the federal state budgetary scientific institution “Federal Research Center All-Russian Institute of Plant Genetic Resources named after N.I. Vavilov”.
Fair enough.
Stay tuned. Thanks to Isby for digging all this up.
Regular readers will know that while we’re big fans here of African traditional vegetables, we are also skeptical about the usefulness of formal “protection” for foods. So I for one am a tiny bit conflicted about some recent news from Kenya:
The Intergovernmental Committee for Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage, upon the proposal, has selected Kenya’s success story of promoting traditional foods and safeguarding traditional foodways in Kenya as a programme, project, or activity best reflecting the principles and objectives of the Convention.
But only a tiny bit. Congratulations to everyone involved.
Jeremy’s latest newsletter has a useful snippet on a paper on the history of the tomato in Europe. I’ll reproduce it below as a taster, but consider subscribing, as there’s lots of other interesting stuff too, on everything from pizza to chocolate.
Maybe you saw those beautiful illustrations of 16th century tomatoes that were doing the rounds a few days ago. They were prompted by a lovely paper from the Netherlands looking at the earliest tomatoes in Europe. The paper may be a bit heavy going, but the researchers published their own summary for the rest of us.
The paper sheds light on those first tomatoes to arrive, and in particular on the notion that these first fruits “were elongated, segmented, and gold in color. After all, that is how they were depicted, and they were called ‘pomo d’oro’: golden apple.” Herbarium specimens and old drawings, many of them newly digitised, revealed many different colours, shapes, and sizes, but not whether tomatoes originated in Peru or Mexico, the two leading candidates. The Dutch researchers sequenced the highly degraded DNA of their specimen and say that it was definitely not a wild plant, and shows strong similarities with three Mexican varieties and two from Peru.
The indigenous Andes population in Peru started domesticating a small wild cherry tomato. They brought this to Mexico, and there they developed the tomato with large fruit that we know today.
No herbarium specimen is ever likely to germinate, so to find out how these first tomatoes in Europe might have tasted the best bet, they suggest, is to go to Mexico and Peru. DNA analysis could probably indicate the closest known relatives for a taste test.
Now, will someone please examine critically the whole “tomatoes didn’t catch on because they were considered poisonous” thing, or is there already enough proof of that?