Grasshoppers are not the only insects!

Anyone who was interested in the Eating Insects post I wrote a few days ago, might like to visit La Traducteuse on Lingual Fun for a great follow up post. Those of you who had bad reactions to those grasshoppers may prefer not to be eating at the time :) I confess they now look quite delicious.

Yes we have more bananas

The last post and a follow up article from the Economist sent to me by Janeway has brought me back to my childhood in Africa.

The title of this post is taken from a song my father used to sing, completely out of tune as always. When we lived in Malawi he translated it, very roughly, into Nyanja. Purely from memory it went something like this (and I could be horribly wrong):

Inde palibe ntochi
Palibe ntochi lero

I remember too a conversation discussing whether all fruits have seeds. I racked my brains and finally said that bananas don't have seeds. But of course they do in the wild.

Photo from Wikimedia Commons

The seeds are hard and rather large. The first edible varieties probably arose by random mutation and it's thought they may have been cultivated for as long as 10,000 years

From the Economist article (no link as it is subscription only)

Cultivated bananas, like their cousins, the tropical staples cassava and taro, have a characteristic that makes them ideal food. They have no seeds. Unfortunately, the same characteristic means that it is fiendishly difficult to breed better bananas. This is an important task, as bananas are threatened by new kinds of pests and diseases. Furthermore, because bananas are clones, whole plantations could be devastated by such an attack.

The United Nations estimates that bananas are the fourth most important crop in the world, after wheat, rice and maize.

Leuven, as mentioned in my previous post, is the "banana capital" of the world. It houses 1,175 different varieties grown as tiny plants in test tubes. They have recently developed a less labour intensive method of storage, ways of deep-freezing banana samples. They have been able to show that, after five years in liquid nitrogen, banana cell suspensions can be recovered and turned into growing plants. And it is a second copy of all these samples that has been transported to Montpellier in the south of France.

Back up bananas

I was extremely pleased to see last night that the BBC caught up with me on the subject of the Svalbard seed vault :) Tuesday 26 February was the day of the official opening.

Svalbard is only part of the story though because the storage conditions don't suit all plants, only those which have seeds that can be dried and stored. Bananas don't.

Photo by L. Guarino via Bioversity. Creative Commons licence.

Bananas and plantains cannot be dried and stored but they do need cold ( -196C) temperatures. The Institut de recherche pour le développement (IRD) in Montpellier in the south of France has taken delivery of a safety backup of samples from Leuven in Belgium, in the same way that Svalbard has taken delivery of seeds.

If anything should happen to the original samples there is now a duplicate set available. It may seem unlikely but a typhoon damaged the Philippine rice gene bank, and looters destroyed wheat and lentil gene banks at Abu Ghraib in Iraq. It is essential to preserve these collections of biodiversity.

Other crops that are best preserved by tissue culture or in field gene banks are coconut, cassava, yam, potato, sweet potato and taro.

For the full story see Bioversity.

Update: posts also from DianeCA of Metamorphoses and RennyBA has loads of pictures on his Terella - he has been to Svalbard!

Eating insects

Photo by Flickr user The Daily Joe. Creative Commons licence.

Has anyone tried fried grasshoppers or chapulines? They are a speciality of Oaxaca in Mexico and one of 1400 types of insects in the world which are eaten by humans. The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) says the insect world offers great possibilities, both economically and nutritionally.

Nutritional potential

As a food source insects are highly nutritious, some having as much protein as raw meat. In the larval stage they also can have a high fat content with important minerals and vitamins. While some are eaten only to ward off starvation, others like the grasshoppers above are considered a delicacy.

Management and development

Although insects account for most of the diversity in natural forests, which is where most edible species are found, they are probably the least studied. While forest dwellers know an enormous amount about these insects, the forest managers know very little about their potential or how they could be harvested sustainably.

Commercial potential

Apart from their nutritional value there is the possibility for jobs and income for local people rearing and capturing these insects and preparing them for market. According to Patrick Durst, senior FAO forestry officer, there are opportunities to make edible insects more appealing and to expand markets to urban areas.

There has been a 3 day workshop in Thailand, run jointly by the FAO and Chiang Mai University to consider these possibilities. They hope to "raise awareness of the potential of edible forest insects as a food source, document the contribution of edible insects to rural livelihoods and assess linkages to sustainable forest management and conservation".

PS I didn't try the chapulines but my husband did. He said they were unremarkable, just crispy. Although I realise it's illogical when I'm happy to eat prawns or mussels, or even snails, it will take a little more marketing before I try grasshoppers myself.

A walk to St Catherine's Hill

I went for a walk today, in the brief brighter morning. I'm glad I did because it started raining later.

I set off from the bridleway behind St Cross Mill which is now privately owned. It looks like an idyllic setting.

Along the way I came across some friendly sheep who clearly thought I would feed them. This one was a little more shy than the rest.

But his friend thought I was paying him too much attention.

I followed the path uphill.

Something has been stripping the bark off the trees. Could rabbits leave tooth marks like this?

And then I followed the path down again. I did manage to get down without losing my footing .... too much.

A view of St Cross Hospital from the other side. It gives a little more indication of the extent of the buildings than the view from the road.

A little closer to St Catherine's hill. You can see there are people climbing it.

The Itchen navigation canal was built in 1665. It was an important route between Winchester and the sea. Amazing to think that this was an important route, when you see it today.

The irrigation system of winter flooding and summer draining allowed the areas to be intensively farmed but fell into disuse in the 20th century when alternative fertilizers came into use.

The stepped pathway up St Catherine's Hill. At this point I decided I didn't have enough time to get to the top, let alone back again, so I'll save that for another day.

I tool the easier route back, which led me beneath the old Hockley Viaduct. The viaduct, 2,014 ft (614m) long with 33 arches, once linked the Didcot, Newbury and Southampton railway with the the Great Western Railway, and was in use for passenger traffic until 1960, and freight until 1966. It is the largest brick built structure in the country and the oldest with a concrete core. In years to come, will they regret not having preserved this better?

PhotoHunter: wooden

Late again!

Two wooden boxes which have stories to tell. The top one was given to my father but has now been passed on to my elder son. It has a brass plate on it dated 1848. It is sitting on top of an oak chest (not its normal position) which we bought many years ago as a place for our sons to keep their toys. Its first role in life was as a grain store in the 18th century. The theory was that it if it had survived 250+ years, it could survive a few bashes from the boys. It did.

A wooden wheelbarrow we found in the cellar of our house. More decorative than useful, so it stays at the bottom of the garden..

A wooden rowing boat moored across the river for anyone to use when the river is higher. I always think they look as though they are posing for an impressionist painter. There are a number of these along the bank, in differing states of repair. You do occasionally see people in them but it's not something I would risk.

PhotoHunt

Eco jam

Photo from Naturgie

For 20 years Naturgie have been selling products made by small Fairtrade and organic producers. The new range Eco Attitudes are also eco-friendly, designed to minimise impact on the environment.

• The jams, chutneys and preserves are vacuum cooked at low temperatures which preserves their flavour, and uses less energy.
• The jars are 70% recycled glass and 10% lighter than the normal jam jar, so reducing the energy used in transportation.
• The labels are made from recycled paper.
• They are printed with water-based inks without chemical solvents.
• The lid uses 50% less steel than conventional lids.

They cost a little more than many of the jams available, but isn't it worth it when you consider the benefits?

International Mother Language Day

Journée internationale de la langue maternelle

Welcome
Bienvenu
Willkommen
Velkommen
Bienvenuto
Bienvenido
Welkom

Languages are the most powerful instruments of preserving and developing our heritage. Nothing is more interesting than learning another language and it isn't just the language that you learn. Some may suggest that a universal language would be a step forward, but so much about other cultures would be lost.

Agricultural research

SARID = Sustainable Agriculture Research for International Development.

Three quarters of the poorest people in developing countries depend on agriculture. A major initiative to tackle some of the most damaging pests, diseases and environmental conditions which can devastate their crops was launched today by SARID, with £7 million being shared between projects.

Arsenic in rice

Photo by Flickr user Praziquantel. Creative Commons licence.

Arsenic contamination is a major problem in some countries, the result of contaminated groundwater, pollution from mining, and the use of municipal solid waste as fertilizer. the research teams will look at types of rice that take up less of the contamination. This work will be carried out in India, Bangladesh, China and Aberdeen in Scotland

Purging plantain pests

Photo from SARID.

Plantain, or cooking bananas, make up 30% of the daily calories of many of Africa's poorest people, but up to half the crop is lost a a result of worms feeding on the roots of the plants. Because the plants cannot be bred - they are sterile - normal breeding programmes can't be used to produce resistant strains. Researchers in Uganda and the UK (Leeds) will be looking at this problem.

Other research projects

In total there will be 12 different projects over the next four years, covering crops such as sweet potatoes, coconuts, millet and maize, kale and cabbage. More detail is available in a pdf file.

It is very likely that at least some of the research will be looking at genetic modification. This was once thought to be a wonderful way to alleviate poverty and hunger but more recently there has been huge controversy over its safety and impact.

Two very conflicting reports have recently been published, one from the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA), and the other from Friends of the Earth International. While biotechnology may not be the "magic bullet" it once was expected to be, it may well have a role to play. It is important though that it shouldn't be developed without consideration of the environment in which it will be used.

La Défense de l'environnement

La Défense, the business district in Paris, is well known for its superb modern architecture. There are plans for a new building, the Carpe Diem tower, which will be built to the highest environmental standards, with a green roof and surfaces covered by solar panels. The designers expect a 30% reduction in energy use.

Photo by Flickr user John Cohen. Creative Commons Licence.

The tower, designed by Stern Architects of New York, will have a winter garden at its base and roof garden terraces at the top. Solar panels will provide hot water and windows will be protected from the sun to reduce any necessity for air-conditioning. The building will have natural ventilation, systems for the recovery of soapy water and rain water, and low-consumption lighting.

Photo by Flickr user Co1nco1n. Creative Commons licence.

For heating, the building will be part of the La Défense network but it's hoped that there will be little need, as a result of heat produced by computers etc. Two of the four sides of the building will be inclined in such a way as to optimise the use of natural daylight.

Source (in French) Développement durable le journal , with an artist's impression of the building.
See also my earlier post La Grande Arche de la Défense.

Blooming February

Although nights have been cold and we have had frosts like this until the sun arrives, things are very ahead of themselves this year.

Blackthorn is blossoming everywhere. The Green Fingered Photographer has an interesting post about blackthorn with all sorts of fascinating information I never knew. He's also a wonderful photographer.

Although we often see daffodils in February, it's not normally as early as mid-February.

I even spotted one tree whose leaves were starting to come out, a hawthorn. Admittedly it was the only one I could see, nevertheless it was a surprise to see it.

One swallow doesn't make a spring, so one advanced February doesn't make global warming, but it does make you wonder. I can't remember the last time we had "proper" snow here.

Pedalling clean water

A team in California have come up with an idea that may help the 20% of the world's population that don't have ready access to fresh water. The idea has been developed in response to a competition, innovate or die, whose sponsors include Google.

At the moment it is still very much a work in progress, though a protoype, the Aquaduct, has been built.

Before I realised it was a protoype, I had some reservations about the video. Some of these questions are known to the team, such as whether it will be easy to maintain locally, and how affordable it will be because of course it's the poorest who have the most need of such a system.

I do have two further issues: I hope they aren't under the illusion that the tricycle will be used over a lovely smooth and well maintained road like the one in the video; and I really wish they hadn't perpetuated the stereotype that it is woman's work to fetch water to the extent that they do. It is true that it is mainly women who do fetch water in Africa, but we don't have to assume that it always will be so.

Source IRIN

Une maison de l'eau

A centre devoted to evaluating and promoting water technologies concerned with the management and treatment of water is to be built in La Ciotat, a town on the Mediterranean coast of France. It will be located behind the town hall.

Photo by Flickr user KiMiz. Creative commons licence.

This story caught my attention because about ten years ago we thought about living in the area but at the time all our parents were alive and we thought it was just too far from them. In spite of visiting several times, we have only this one remaining photo of our own (scanned) of a calanque, a rocky inlet, nearby.

To return to the point of this post, the purposes of the Maison de l'Eau will be

• educational especially for school children


• to provide training for professionals who work in the water industry in the region


• to conduct pilot studies into new approaches for conservation

There are already three projects planned:

One is a desalinisation system to produce between 1 and 2 cubic metres of fresh water per hour for use in the marina. The plant will be situated in the old shipyard. Salt water will be filtered under pressure through a membrane which retains the salts and micro-organisms. They particularly hope to develop a way of doing this using less energy.

Secondly, the use of waste water will be tested on the outskirts of new water treatment centres after treatment by ultraviolet light to disinfect it. The water produced will be used to irrigate green spaces.

Finally, the collection and use of rain water for watering the parc du Mugel, a 12 hectare area. It already has a gravity fed system dating back to the 19th century which will be totally restored.

This is all considered to be a good example of devlopment which is sustainable. I'm not personally very impressed with desalinisation plants, whether they use less energy or not. What happens to the salts which are removed from the water? They must go somewhere, so how do they dispose of them?

A must-read for cat lovers

A heart-warming tale from A Fish Blog. A lovely story, you must read it!

Our cat is far too spoilt to survive that.

Photohunter: free

Better late than never! It's a free life after all :)

My thought today was to show that no matter how tiny your garden (and ours really is tiny) you can grow some of your own food. Not only is it free, from the cost point of view, but it can also be free from chemicals and free of "food miles", that is - it has no travel costs.

I grow herbs in a small herb garden, with some small spring bulbs among them: here are sage and the chives just showing, but I also have various thymes and rosemary, with others such as parsley, basil and coriander grown from seed each year.

Our first crop of pears on a small tree grown agaisnt the west-facing wall.

We have grown two varieties of grapes over a support to provide shade for the seating area and, of course, grapes.

Something else free is the fresh air, and believe me it was very fresh on New Year's Day when I took this picture below.

At that time of year, even on a beautiful day like that, it's also free from crowds. And yes, it's the same beach as in my last post.

PhotoHunt

Peace

After a bad day I love to look at a photo like this, taken 1 January 2008, on the Ile de Ré. Today was a particularly hectic day at work and I'm too tired to write anything meaningful.

Flattery

Dragonstar has very, very kindly passed this on to me. I am indeed flattered.

Are my eyes at fault, or is there an optical illusion making it look crooked? I keep wanting to straighten it up.

Anyway, I'd like to point it in the direction of three entirely new-to-me blogs:

A Fish Blog

Photos from Northern Norway

Photographs from Finland

All three are very well worth a visit.

PlayPumps on YouTube

Remember the PlayPumps I told you about? Here is another video from National Geographic.

“Water is intimately linked with education and gender equality. Girls who have to spend time gathering water for the family tend not to be in school.” ~ Kofi Annan, United Nations Secretary General

Six unimportant things about myself

I thought I would accept this tag because of course it would be really quite simple. Six things? Easy peasy. Hmmm.

The rules:

• Link to the person that tagged you (YSTL of Webs of Significance)


• Post the rules on your blog.


• Tag six random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs.


• Let each random person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their website.


• Let your tagger know when your entry is up.

So here are my offerings

1. I seem to have spent most of my life fighting against the small daily superstitions which my family observed. Some of them appear to be founded in good sense - not walking under ladders. But where on earth did having to make sure you don't see the new moon through glass come from?
   

   

   So I was dismayed to find myself dismayed when I spotted the new moon in one of my photos taken at 11:30 in the morning!

2. I don't really like eating fruit so I have a struggle to keep up my 5 portions of fruit and vegetables a day. I've a feeling it's just laziness that I can't be bothered to prepare it. It's usually so messy. I'm fine with vegetables.

3. I don't like feeling cold. So many people say that they would rather cold, sunny weather than warm and wet. Give me warm and wet any day.

4. Tomorrow is Valentine's Day. Unless something miraculous happens I will never have received a Valentine from anyone other than my sons. Ahhh, poor me. I'm not too troubled by it though because I have some sympathy with the notion that it is all artificial hype.

   
   

5. Of the ten different places I have lived since I married, not many compared to others I know, my favourite was the last one, a country cottage, thatched, backing on to bluebell woods. It was a wonderful place to have children and, while I know it's no longer suitable for us, I did love it. My heart is still there.

6. And finally, I'm not the avid reader I used to be. Once I used to read two books a week on average but these days it's much, much less. I blame the computer, and also that I try to read in French more often, and that's painfully slow.

So now for people to tag.

Caledonia
Claudie
LadyBanana
Dragonstar
Captain Lifecruiser
TorAa

Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to do the same! But no offense will be taken if you don't.

Using software in the forests of Cameroon

Photo by Flickr user strollerdos. Creative commons licence.

Helveta is a company which has developed software used in managing and tracking timber assets. A lecturer from University College London, Dr Jerome Lewis, has been collaborating with them and NGOs to help local forest communities in Cameroon to monitor logging in their forests.

The forests of Cameroon are subject to extensive illegal logging and the timber pirates often destroy vital resources for local people. The team has adapted GPS units using icon-driven software so that the local communities themselves can monitor the forests.

Under agreements that are being made with the European Union, governments must ensure they allow only legal logging and to operate in a way that respects the rights of indigenous communities. This system, which sends data directly to the website, will be able to demonstrate that these promises are being kept and so allow the timber to be sold on the European market.

Both the local forest communities and the government will gain from the system: the forests will be protected from illegal logging and the timber can be sold to the lucrative European market. They hope in the longer term that the system will be used in other countries of the Congo basin.

It's a wonderful example of how modern technology can help the survival of low technology communities.

Further details

Save the world, drive for fun

According to Professor Iain Borden of University College London, environmentalists might have more success in encouraging people to use public transport if they campaigned for people to drive only for fun.

He warns that ignoring the cultural reasons why people like to drive can undermine efforts to encourage people to use more public transport. So instead of saying that people should drive only when necessary, activists should be changing the emphasis and advocating driving only for pleasure.

Photo by Flickr user .K.M. Creative Commons licence.

In the same lecture he spoke about "psychological traffic calming" by removing signs, lights, lines from some junctions to slow traffic by removing instructions to road users, also allowing eye contact to occur. The city looks better, drivers and pedestrians become more responsible and no longer "sign-watching zombies but instead alert, attentive, people-aware citizens".

That is the theory anyway.

Do you care?

If you visit RennyBA's blog, and it is worth a visit at any time, you will find a post about how one man who works for CARE, is raising money in Norway.

"Globally poverty has a woman's face"

In many of the poorest countries where men have been killed by war and AIDS, women are the heads of households. Empowering women allows them to help their families and communities escape poverty.

You may be able to help. Please do.

PhotoHunter: heavy

Nothing came immediately to mind this week. I thought of heavy rocks in strange formations, like these in Mexico (scanned from an old photo).

I thought of heavy books like this one, 1000 pages, and the content can be quite heavy too!

But then ...... The breeder who sold us our cat used to weigh the kittens daily, and asked us to continue to do so weekly for a little while, just to make sure all was well. We gave that up ages ago, so I was amazed to find him happily curled up in the bowl waiting, or is that weighting :).

But he is now too heavy - the scales recorded an error!

PhotoHunt

I should, of course, have saved my mirror post for today.

Africa@home

Distributed computing - I've been an enthusiast for a long time but I haven't always been enthused about the projects available. I first started several years ago when I was part of the Screensaver Lifesaver project run by Oxford University. Then there was the BBC climate change experiment, but that too finished.

I am delighted therefore to have found malariacontrol.net which will harness the volunteer computing power of thousands of people around the world, to help improve the ability of researchers to predict, and so control, the spread of malaria in Africa.

The intention is to involve African academic institutes as well as the original partnership. The link to their site is here. (I can't seem to mention them by name, Blogger keeps wanting to turn it into a mailto: address.)

And whether it was intentional or not, I like the play on words.

A photo of a malaria control net
from Flickr user mandaville_flickr. Creative commons licence.

Grow trees in Africa by recycling aluminium

It sounds unlikely that the more aluminium you recycle, the more trees will be planted in Africa, but Alupro is running a new programme to tackle deforestation in Malawi while at the same time providing the means to create small businesses in rural areas.

About 43 million tonnes of aluminium is produced annually, 30% of which is recycled. In the UK 99% of aluminium used in packaging is consumer packaging, from drinks cans, takeaway containers, to lids from yogurt pots.

Alupro is providing core funding for the next two years and for every tonne of recycled aluminium in this country, a tree will be grown. They are hoping that it will mean 85,000 trees over the two years, providing 15 jobs, and training programmes for around 25 volunteers at each of the 75 village nurseries.

Working with Ripple Africa in Malawi, they will establish a special nursery to grow fruit trees such as mango, lemon, orange and avocado from grafting. Others such as pawpaw and guava will be grown from seed.

Alupro has been running similar schemes since 2003, resulting in 100,000 trees being planted in the UK and in Burkina Faso in Africa. In the meantime the amount of aluminium recycled has increased by 47%. I feel sure this could be increased still further if local authorities such as ours could be persuaded to collect more than just aluminium cans.

Images from Alupro where there are many more facts and figures.