Grinding, fermenting, and detoxifying our way to bigger brains — an anthropologist makes the case that food processing, historically women s work, did as much for human evolution as the mammoth-spearing got credit for. Speaking of transforming raw ingredients into something civilization-defining: a Japanese temple has been quietly perfecting vegan cooking for 700 years, no marketing Continue…
As chance would have it, following my recent speculative foray into the possible connection between language and crop diversity, an essay by the great Andrea Wulf has just appeared that tells the story of how a remarkable German naturalist used breadfruit and linguistics to work out Polynesian migration patterns long before DNA or archaeology could Continue reading "The fruits of migration"
Jeremy rides his hobby horses in his comment on my recent ride on my own: Good point, that improved varieties always depend on existing diversity yet those doing the improving seldom contribute to maintaining the diversity they depend on. I would add a couple of my hobby horses. Will ordinary Zimbabweans be able to afford Continue reading "Featured: Fresh for who, and at what price?"
“Blueberries are a great example of agriculture as high-tech industry,” argues Daniel Hulls, the boss of AgDevCo, an investment fund. Driscoll’s, an American agribusiness giant, supplies seeds to farmers in Zimbabwe that are the result of years of cross-pollination. Polyethylene covers protect bushes. Storage rooms have optical sorting machines. To maximise profits, firms time production Continue…
Festivals, rituals and seed-saving go hand in hand, as this photo essay on Koraput s Adivasis shows for World Indigenous Peoples Day. Speaking of unlikely alliances, Israeli and Palestinian researchers have teamed up on wheat that can take the heat in a warming, drying Middle East. Not to be outdone in the resilience stakes, the cowpea Continue reading "Nibbles: Festivals, Wheat breeding, Cowpea,…
The rise and fall of language diversity through the Holocene by Blasi, Hamilton, Gray Bowern, published in Science last month, does something I really love. It complicates a standard narrative. The received story of language diversity is that it has been declining steadily for centuries, largely driven by colonialism and globalization. But direct evidence Continue reading "A Babel of…
My ex-colleagues at the Crop Trust have a very nice animation on the Genesys blog-type thing showing the progress of landrace collecting around the world over the past 125 years. Do please read the post for the details of how it was done, and some observations on the results. Here I just wanted to highlight Continue reading "The accessions in Spain fall mainly everywhere"
Ethnobotanical and genetic assessments of Central American avocado landraces reveal novel sources of biodiversity and ancient migration patterns. DNA from landraces, and interviews with farmers, show that people transported and cultivated avocados across the Americas long before European contact, with landraces from lowland Nicaragua and Honduras in particular showing evidence of ancient migration…
In the UK, Herefordshire s Museum of Cider is picking up national recognition for its genebank of heritage apple trees. The BBC s canonical autumnal apple story comes a little early this year. Speaking of iconic apples, Kazakhstan is scaling up efforts to bring back the Aport, the giant heirloom that once made Almaty famous. No word Continue reading "Nibbles: Museum of Cider, Aport apple, Rattan…
Yet more on agrobiodiversity marketing in Kenya. This time it s coffee. Spring Valley Coffee gives out nifty little cards on all its products, providing information on the varietal composition of different blends, and where the beans that go into each are grown. This decaf from Guji in Ethiopia caught my eye in particular because the Continue reading "Smelling the heirloom coffee"