In Azerbaijan.
A banana is a banana
The identification of Musa paradisiaca with a plantain and Musa sapientum with a sweet banana probably reinforced the tendency to associate each name with a type of fruit, respectively plantain for the cooking types and banana for the sweet types. In fact this distinction is entirely semantic and artificial. It has no botanical basis, nor indeed any consistent culinary basis. A banana is a banana, whether it is cooked or eaten raw.
But you knew that, right? The quotation is taken from the Musapedia on the all-new, all-singing, all-dancing ProMusa website. So for more than you could possibly want to know about banana nomenclature, and much else besides, you now know where to go.
Now, just remind me, what is the difference between a banana and a plantain?
Potato flesh colors
Potatoes’ flesh colors / El color de las pulpas en papas, a photo by CIP – International Potato Center on Flickr.
Great shot from CIP.
Brainfood: Tomato erosion, Cassava starch, Landscape diversity, American chestnut, Niche models, Dormancy genes, Herbarium collections, Indian livestock breeding, Banana breeding, Pollinators, Shattering gene, Participatory research
- The risks of success in quality vegetable markets: Possible genetic erosion in Marmande tomatoes (Solanum lycopersicum L.) and consumer dissatisfaction. Market takes the fun out of landraces.
- Genetic variability of root peel thickness and its influence in extractable starch from cassava (Manihot esculenta Crantz) roots. Starch content depends on dry matter content and peel thickness. About 1500 accessions from CIAT evaluated for the latter, so lots to play around with.
- A meta-analysis of crop pest and natural enemy response to landscape complexity. More landscape complexity means more natural enemies. Still no cure for cancer.
- American Chestnut past and future: Implications of restoration for resource pulses and consumer populations of eastern U.S. forests. Reintroduction of blight-resistant chestnut may have some weird effects on other species.
- Keep collecting: accurate species distribution modelling requires more collections than previously thought. Oh damn.
- Variation in seed dormancy quantitative trait loci in Arabidopsis thaliana originating from one site. Is due to two QTLs. Also flowering time. But no, I don’t understand that “In contrast…” at the end of the abstract either.
- Tracking origins of invasive herbivores through herbaria and archival DNA: the case of the horse-chestnut leaf miner. Another use for old herbarium specimens: finding evidence of pests.
- Animal breeding in India – a time for reflection, and action. The reflection is that genetic improvement has stagnated, so the action needed includes better phenotypic record keeping, more attention to local diversity and community-breeding programmes.
- Performance of micropropagation-induced off-type of East African highland banana (Musa AAA – East Africa). A promising avenue for improvement, the off-types yield more better bananas, a month later.
- Pollination services in the UK: How important are honeybees? Not as important as you might think!
- The same regulatory point mutation changed seed-dispersal structures in evolution and domestication. Cabbage-family fruit development and rice shattering share the same single point mutation.
- Participatory research and on-farm management of agricultural biodiversity in Europe. By Michel “Pimpert”. That should be Pimbert. Old news, but worth mentioning.
Diverse seeds for disaster relief
SciDev.net reports on a new study reinforcing the view that after a disaster that wipes out seed stocks the local, informal seed system “in the form of loans or gifts of seed from friends and relatives” is more likely to restore agrobiodiversity to the farming systems than seed relief and markets. The study looked specifically at cowpea (Vigna unguiculata) after disastrous floods in Gaza Province, Mozambique, and strengthens the more general conclusion that seeds already in the local system offer the best chance of restoration.
I can’t help wondering, however, whether disasters of this kind might not also offer an opportunity to inject extra diversity into farming systems. Not just any old diversity, as might be provided by seed relief or generous private sector suppliers, but diversity selected to perform well under predicted climatic conditions in the disaster area. A savvy genebank system, working with relief agencies, might be able to supply small amounts of pre-selected diversity that farmers would be willing to try under the circumstances. And some of that diversity might even be better than what they had before the disaster.
Just a thought.