Agrobiodiversity is crops, livestock, foodways, microbes, pollinators, wild relatives …
Tony IDs some Pawnee Corn:
The center ear on the left picture appears to be the Pawnee Blue flour, a blue-black flour corn with ears 8″ to 10″ long, usually 8 rowed, plants 6′ to 8′ tall, 110 day variety.
The center ear in the right picture looks like Pawnee Red Flour corn, color light red, ears 6″ long.
This kind of thing is one of the absolute best bits about the internet.
Purple sweet potato fries? Riiiiiiiiiiiiight. Anyway, let Ted Carey try to convince you.
“The CIP breeder sent me about 2000 seeds from crosses between purple parent plants that looked promising for regions like ours. In 2007, we planted those seeds at K-State’s John C. Pair Horticulture Center near Wichita. Each seed had the potential to be a unique new variety.”
If you were intrigued by the source of the packet of germplasm I illustrated a few days ago, here it is:
It is the Nordic Genetic Resources Centre, or NordGen. It’s on the grounds of the Swedish Agricultural University at Alnarp near Malmo. As coincidence would have it I was up there in Alnarp earlier this week for a workshop, and managed to take a few photos. More later. As you can see, seed conservation is done in chest freezers, rather than the sort of walk-in cold room that you see in many genebanks around the world. Each freezer has a temperature probe, and if the temperature goes up too much, the genebank manager gets an SMS.
Unlike Luigi, Catofstripes is worried about the future of the genebank at Wellesbourne:
This piece of news saddened me more than many recent disaster stories. All universities are struggling for funding at the moment and most are losing money that they rely on but surely this is something that transcends mere academic interest?
To which one would have to ask, whose interests does it serve to fund a genebank?
Rachel Laudan tackles the perennial question that keeps food and agriculture nerds awake long into the night … by saying it’s a bad question and asking some better ones.
What problems did grains solve, what tools did humans have? Well, the problem they solved was one of fuel. Humans need fuel. Grains, if you can process them for fewer calories than you get out at the end, are great sources of fuel. Maybe you can even increase the calories by processing.
Blast! That’s another blog I’m going to have to subscribe to. h/t The Scientist Gardener.