Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

September 7, 2009September 6, 2009

Ghanaian buffet

Ghana has forty-seven different kinds of edible green leaves, each with a distinctive flavor.

I bet. And the diversity doesn’t stop there.

I think of Ghanaian cuisine as a kind of culinary jazz. The pepper, tomatoes, and onions, and possibly the oil, form the rhythm section. The stew is one musical form, like blues, the soup and one-pot dishes are others. Like a successful improvisation, the additional ingredients—vegetables, seeds and nuts, meat and fish—harmonize and combine into vibrant, mellow creations.

Dip into the sampler CD at Global Voices Online.

September 6, 2009

Marina of the Zabballeen does the rounds

We’ve blogged a few times about the plight of the Zabballeen — Cairo’s Coptic garbage collectors and pig-keepers — in the wake of the pig cull which was the Egyptian governments main response to swine flu. Now, via Treehugger, comes news of a movie about this embattled community: Marina of the Zabballeen. It seems to have done quite well on the festival circuit. If you caught it, let us know.

September 6, 2009September 5, 2009

(New) things to do with pears

A little something silly for the weekend.

This bizarre story made it to Boing Boing and the Daily Mail, but the earliest I can find for it, and indeed where I first saw it (Thanks, Matt), was a website in Portuguese. Now, through the miracle of Google Translate, we bring you, How to make pear shaped Buddha!

I think this is the “How to” Strange as I posted here, after all, who is going to try this at home? Well, then, for purposes of curiosity, if you ever heard of pear-shaped Buddha or even the famous square watermelons in Japan knows that the process is simple, just put a cast on fruit when they are starting to rise because the fruit tends to take the shape of the mold as it unfolds.

I’m afraid of what marketers can do with it …

I’m more afraid of what the Mail did to it, but no matter. More to the point, even the square watermelon is not as new as all that. From Popular Science, January 1938:

Farmer Grows Pumpkins with Human Faces

Pumpkins with human faces have been produced by John M. Czeski, Ohio farmer, after four years of experimenting. To grow the novel fruit, Czeski fashions an aluminum mold of the head he wants to reproduce, and places it around a growing pumpkin approximately the size of a small grapefruit. After the pumpkin has expanded enough to fill the inside contours, the mold is removed. The print of the features remains as the pumpkin continues to grow, and the final result is a lifelike full-size image in the ripened fruit.

Nothing new etc.

September 5, 2009September 6, 2009

Featured: Soybean

Cary explains realpolitik:

[S]oybean is not included in Annex I of the Treaty. In the negotiations, the Chinese objected to its inclusion and thus blocked consensus, and without consensus it dropped off the list.

Is it important that soybean is not on the list? We await enlightenment.

September 5, 2009September 5, 2009

Reporting threats to agrobiodiversity: A modest proposal

Yesterday Hannes, à propos of something else, reminded me of a post I did a few months back about ProMED which asked the question “Why do we still not have an early warning system for genetic erosion?” Today I read about pestMapper — “[an] internet-based software tool for reporting and mapping biological invasions and other geographical and temporal events.” Whose objectives is basically to make a more participatory, Web 2.0-like ProMED. Coincidence? Maybe. Anyway, this is exactly the kind of thing we’ve been thinking here a “global genetic erosion threat reporting and monitoring portal” might look like. Any thoughts? An idea worth pursuing?

pest map