- Quality characteristics of biscuits prepared from finger millet seed coat based composite flour. They’re nutritious. Crocodile Dundee on the tastiness of the iguana may, however, apply.
- Minerals and trace elements in a collection of wheat landraces from the Canary Islands. There are differences, but environment and agronomic practices could affect them.
- Lowering carbon footprint of durum wheat by diversifying cropping systems. Yes, by 7-34%, depending on how the diversification was done.
- Effect of shading by baobab (Adansonia digitata) and néré (Parkia biglobosa) on yields of millet (Pennisetum glaucum) and taro (Colocasia esculenta) in parkland systems in Burkina Faso, West Africa. Taro is a shade lover; grow it under néré, and vice versa.
- Ethnobotanical, morphological, phytochemical and molecular evidence for the incipient domestication of Epazote (Chenopodium ambrosioides L.: Chenopodiaceae) in a semi-arid region of Mexico. Good to know; I love epazote.
- Grape varieties (Vitis vinifera L.) from the Balearic Islands: genetic characterization and relationship with Iberian Peninsula and Mediterranean Basin. See the grand sweep of European history unfold.
- Microsatellite characterization of grapevine (Vitis vinifera L.) genetic diversity in Asturias (Northern Spain). No evidence of communication with the previous group.
- Plant economy of the first farmers of central Belgium (Linearbandkeramik, 5200–5000 b.c.). They were dope fiends.
- Selection for earlier flowering crop associated with climatic variations in the Sahel. Compared to 1976 millet samples, samples collected in 2003 had shorter lifecycle (due to an early flowering allele at the PHYC locus increasing in frequency), and a reduction in plant and spike size. So you don’t need new varieties, the old ones will adapt to climate change. Oh, and BTW, there’s been no genetic erosion.
- Do species’ traits predict recent shifts at expanding range edges? No.
- The domestication syndrome genes responsible for the major changes in plant form in the Triticeae crops. Failure to disarticulate and 6-rows in barley, in detail. Part of a Special Issue on Barley.
- The genetics of colour in fat-tailed sheep: a review. I didn’t know karakul had fat tails.
Nordic chefs exploring Nordic foods with Nordic genebank
I was intrigued by a reference to a genebank in a restaurant review in the Wall Street Journal. Not just any restaurant, but the best restaurant in the world, Noma in Copenhagen, which is “is best known for its fanatical approach to foraging.” Here’s the reference:
Noma helped found a Nordic Food Lab, which has a gene bank that is collating information about the wild products in the region.
Nordic Food Lab does indeed sound interesting (especially its fermentation trials):
Nordic Food Lab is a non-profit self-governed institution established by head chef of Noma, Rene Redzepi and gastronomic entrepreneur, Claus Meyer with the purpose of scientifically exploring the New Nordic Cuisine and disseminating results from this exploration.
But they’re not really establishing a genebank, as suggested by the WSJ piece.
We are collaborating with Nordgen, the amazing bank of genetic material, to evaluate the gastronomic potential of bygone varieties of Scandinavian produce. We will publish our sensory evaluations as they are completed. This promises to be an extremely interesting project; many modern species are produced on other merits besides flavor, and we expect intriguing findings.
Much more sensible.
Englishman saving potatoes in Ireland
So apparently…
David Langford has established the most comprehensive collection of heritage potatoes in Ireland over many years and we are very proud to have been chosen as the repository for this wonderful collection. There are now 180 varieties of potato growing at Lissadell dating from 1768 right up to 2004, including the Famine Lumper.
You can hear Mr Langford thanks to the consistently excellent Home Grown: Ireland from RTE. I hacked the photo from their Facebook page. Friend them!
Lissadell House looks wonderful, but it’s not clear to me how their potato collection relates to Ireland’s national plant genetic resources conservation efforts. Maybe Danny can tell us…
Plant micro-reserves on Mediterranean islands
A while back we blogged a couple of times about plant micro-reserves in Crete, including one for an endemic crop wild relative. That work is linked to a similar project in Cyprus, and although no CWRs are on its priority list of species, I suspect some of the target habitats may contain some. I mention all this because the Cyprus project happens to have a Facebook page (which is interesting in itself), on which photographs have just been published of the setting up of notice boards at one of the micro-sites. 1
Diverse lawns are smarter lawns
There’s been a lot of talk lately about the demise of the Great American Lawn. Or at least its metamorphosis into something a little more sustainable. Even the White House lawn is not immune to re-development. But a recent post on the Native Plants mailing list of the Plant Conservation Alliance points to what may be the beginnings of a backlash. Here’s what Mark Simmons had to say in response to an article in the Star Tribune entitled Goodbye to Grass (Mark’s comments are reproduced here with his permission):
I really like my lawn – my low maintenance, species-rich, drought-adapted native lawn.
While I agree that lawns can be replaced with alternative vegetation, I think that the lawn is entitled to a place in the American landscape and we should be careful of following the current fashion of demonizing turf. It’s not the lawn that’s the problem is how lawns are manufactured. We take a usually single non-native species that’s been bred to rely on a life-support system of water, fertilizer, pesticides herbicides, and a crazy mowing regimen. If you look at native short grasslands around the world its clear that, in contrast, they are low nutrient, species-rich, systems which are at ecological quasi-equilibrium usually maintained by grazing and or fire. Here at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center we adopted an ecological approach to turf by testing different mixes of native turf grasses and against a commonly-used non-native turf lawn species (bermudagrass) and measured performance. The multispecies native mix needs less mowing, had less weeds and was a denser, finer (better looking) turf. The results were just published in the journal Ecological Engineering. Sure it can go drought-dormant and brown in summer if it’s not watered. But if that may be an acceptable alternative to no lawn at all.
My young children can’t play baseball in gravel and agaves. And I want to sink a beer on a Saturday evening bare foot in soft, cool turf. Let’s keep doing lawns, just do them smart.