Food Plants

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Food Plants
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For Love of the Potato
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The Potato Comes to Europe

• The potato came to Europe about 1565 - at first,
  most people in Europe, including the Irish, used
  the potato as a back up for grain production, but
  by the end of the 17th century, it had become an
  important winter food by the mid-eighteenth
  century it was a general field crop and provided
  the staple diet of small farmers during most of
  the year

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Benefits of the Potato
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Van Gogh The Potato Eaters
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Ukrainian Food
Potato Pancakes Borsch
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Potato Vodka
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(No Transcript)
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Young potato plant with early stage of late
blight
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Dried potato leaf infected with late blight
Phytophthora infestans
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Potato tubers with Late Blight
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Potato field infected with late blight
Infection started in center of field
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Severity of blight and famine
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Cartoon of Irish Bogtrotters circa 1840s
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Irish family diggingPotatoes - 1847
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Irish family potato dinner - 1846
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Irish food riots - 1847
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Irish food sent to England 1847 or 1848
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Lessons learned?

• Whatever may be the misfortunes of Ireland, the
  potato is not implicated. It, on the contrary,
  has more than done its duty, in giving them bones
  and sinew cheap ... There is no other crop equal
  to the potato in the power of sustaining life and
  health.
• - Bain 1848

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Ethnobotany and Domesticated Plants
Wheat
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First ethnobotanical rule of food production

• In indigenous agriculture where the crops are
  consumed and not sold, there evolves and is
  maintained a reasonable level of nutritional
  adequacy

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Second ethnobotanical rule of food production

• In indigenous agriculture where the crops are
  grown mainly or only for sale, there develops an
  expanding surplus of food. The overall objective
  of such agricultural systems is to replace a
  pre-existing (natural) plant community with a
  cultivator-made community

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It then follows that

• If the potentially unstable increase in food
  production and human population is to be
  maintained, it must be consistent with three
  aims
• 1. To operate at a maximum profit (labor/yield).
• 2. To minimize year-to-year instability in
  production.
• 3. To operate so as to prevent long-term
  degradation of the production capacity of the
  agricultural system.

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Mexican Corn Varieties
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Darwin on Artificial Selection

• Although man did not cause variability and
  cannot even prevent it, he can select, preserve,
  and accumulate the variations given to him by the
  hand of nature almost in any way which he
  chooses and thus can certainly produce a great
  result Selection by man may be followed either
  methodically and intentionally, or unconsciously
  and unintentionally We can further understand
  how it is that domestic races of plants often
  exhibit an abnormal character, as compared to
  natural species, for they have been modified not
  for their own benefit, but for that of man.

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Heirloom tomatoes
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Heritage Animal Varieties
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(No Transcript)
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Street in Cuzco, Peru with advertisement for
California seeds
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Plant Germ Plasm

• The first category of germ plasm includes the
  native or indigenous varieties of cultivated crop
  plants used elsewhere in commercial agricultural
  production.
• At present many of the major crop plants have a
  limited genetic base, as these have been
  developed through a series of selections that
  emphasize yield often at the expense of insect or
  disease resistance, environmental tolerance,
  multiple use, etc.

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Spread of Southern Corn Leaf Blight
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Southern Corn Leaf Blight
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Close up of Southern Corn Leaf Blight
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Southern Corn Leaf Blight damage to ear
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Sweet Potato
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Healthy Sweet Potatoes Ipomoea batatas
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Sweet potatoes with black rot
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Sweet potatoes with soft rot
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Sweet potatoes with russet crack
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Sweet potato attacked by nematodes
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Sweet potato with stem rot Healthy sweet potato
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Plant Germ Plasm

• The second category of germ plasm material
  includes the identification and collection of
  wild relatives of the more commonly cultivated
  plants.

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Wild Tomato SpeciesGenus Lycoperiscon
Domestic High Altitude Another L.
chmielewskii
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Plant Germ Plasm

• The third category includes plants not yet in the
  economic system and not related to domesticated
  plants. These may have properties of great value
  to us, but these can be very difficult to
  identify.

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Seed and germplasm storage facility Kew Seed
Bank
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New Zealand Maori sweet potato culturing
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Breadfruit
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Diane Ragone Checking BreadfruitCollection in
Hawaii
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New Food From Old
Aztec threshing Amaranth Florentine Codex
16th Century
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Amaranthus hypocondriacusAmaranthaceae
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Amaranth harvest in Sierra Madre, Mexico
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Amaranth seed balls for sale in market, Sierra
Madre
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Aztec God Huitzilopochtli
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Amaranth culture in US today
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More Amaranth Species
A. cruentus A. caudatus
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Triticale
On left wheat, triticale, rye
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The Trouble with Tribbles
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Star fruit Averrhoa carambola
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Pinyon Pine Pinus edulis
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Stone Pine Pinus pinea
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Pine nuts or pignoli from Pinus edulis
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Kiwi Fruit Actinidia chinensis
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Kiwi fruit cultivation
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Taro Colocasia esculenta
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Taro harvest - Hawaii
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Taro corms
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Tamarind Tamarindus indica
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Tamarind Fruits
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Tamarind based sauces
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Tamarinido Drinks