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Lots of questions about agrobiodiversity

After years of web-based consultation and diligent sifting through the numerous submissions, we now have the final list of “One hundred important questions facing plant science research” in the form of a paper in New Phytologist. The 100-questions thing may be approaching self-parody, but I will resist the temptation to mock the whole enterprise and simply point out here that there are several questions in the list which involve agricultural biodiversity, its conservation and effective use. I’ll leave you with the most obvious example, question E6:

How can we ensure the long-term availability of genetic diversity within socio-economically valuable gene pools?

Leave your answer in the comments.

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Featured: Manco Capac and Mama Ocllo

Eve knows what that maize stuff in the Machu Picchu light show is all about:

I think the figures in your screen grab are intended to represent Manco Capac and Mama Ocllo, the legendary founders of Cusco and the Inca empire. Once they found the place where the golden scepter could be plunged easily all the way into the earth, that meant that was the place to build their city. They taught the people about agriculture (hence the maize), weaving, and all aspects of civilization, and went on to found the lineage of Inca rulers. There are many versions of this story — a couple can be found here or here.

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Corn conspiracy

I too am back from my summer holidays, but with a somewhat smaller haul of goodies. Two items only, and this is the first.

Take a look at this carving, part of the arch around a window in Rosslyn Chapel outside Edinburgh, more formally known as the Collegiate Chapel of St Matthew.

Maize? in Rosslyn Chapel

Do those things in the wider arch look to you like ears of maize?

And how about this? Do those stylised, possibly spiky three-leaved things look like an aloe, or, as the Rosslyn Chapel Photographic CD would have it, a cactus?

Aloe? in Rosslyn Chapel

If they did, that would be a mystery indeed, because the chapel was completed in 1484, eight years before Columbus sailed to the New World, source of cacti and maize. There is, of course, a simple explanation: Henry I Sinclair, Earl of Orkney and grandfather of the Rosslyn Chapel’s founder, William Sinclair, sailed to North America in around 1398, brought back samples (or at least depictions) of maize and aloe (or cacti), which the chapel masons 1 incorporated into these carvings, all subsequent history of the incident being scrupulously hidden from history’s view.

Not having read or seen it, I was unaware that The Da Vinci Code makes much of Rosslyn Chapel and its Masonic and Templar associations, but frankly, I’m not in the least bit convinced that those carvings are what people say they are. And in that, I’m not alone. The BBC pours cold water on the idea too.

Undaunted, however, I’ll be scrutinizing the son-et-lumiere at Machu Pichu for evidence of neeps among the tatties.

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Taking tomato improvement to the masses

It’s basically your standard I-found-redemption-in-a-tomato-heirloom story:

Another life somewhere in the pastoral wilds of Co Kilkenny, in a summer long ago, the wife of a Finnish jewellerymaker brought slices of tomato to the lunch table: slices a centimetre thick, a hand’s breadth across, jewel-bright with olive oil and scattered with chopped green basil. This simple revelation of what tomatoes should be, enfolded in mouthfuls of sweetness and scent, set my early hankering for the good life.

But this piece in the Irish Times did teach me something for a change. It taught me there’s something called the EU-Sol project “to improve the quality of the tomatoes and potatoes we eat.” But there’s more to it than that: check out the bits of its website aimed at the general public and schools.