1. Food Plants

2. For Love of the Potato

3. 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

4. Benefits of the Potato

5. Van Gogh – The Potato Eaters

6. Ukrainian Food Potato PancakesBorsch

7. Potato Vodka

9. Young potato plant with early stage of late blight

10. Dried potato leaf infected with late blight – Phytophthora infestans

11. Potato tubers with Late Blight

12. Potato field infected with late blight – Infection started in center of field

13. Severity of blight and famine

14. Cartoon of Irish “Bogtrotters” circa 1840’s

15. Irish family digging Potatoes - 1847

16. Irish family potato dinner - 1846

17. Irish food riots - 1847

18. Irish food sent to England – 1847 or 1848

19. 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

20. Ethnobotany and Domesticated Plants Wheat

21. 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

22. 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

23. 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.

24. Mexican Corn Varieties

25. 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.”

26. Heirloom tomatoes

27. Heritage Animal Varieties

29. Street in Cuzco, Peru with advertisement for California seeds

30. 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.

31. Spread of Southern Corn Leaf Blight

32. Southern Corn Leaf Blight

33. Close up of Southern Corn Leaf Blight

34. Southern Corn Leaf Blight – damage to ear

35. Sweet Potato

36. Healthy Sweet Potatoes – Ipomoea batatas

37. Sweet potatoes with black rot

38. Sweet potatoes with soft rot

39. Sweet potatoes with russet crack

40. Sweet potato attacked by nematodes

41. Sweet potato with stem rot Healthy sweet potato

42. Plant Germ Plasm The second category of germ plasm material includes the identification and collection of wild relatives of the more commonly cultivated plants.

43. Wild Tomato Species Genus Lycoperiscon Domestic High Altitude Another L. chmielewskii

44. 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.

45. Seed and germplasm storage facility – Kew Seed Bank

46. New Zealand – Maori sweet potato culturing

47. Breadfruit

48. Diane Ragone Checking Breadfruit Collection in Hawaii

49. New Food From Old Aztec threshing Amaranth – Florentine Codex – 16 th Century

50. Amaranthus hypocondriacus Amaranthaceae

51. Amaranth harvest in Sierra Madre, Mexico

52. Amaranth seed balls for sale in market, Sierra Madre

53. Aztec God Huitzilopochtli

54. Amaranth culture in US today

55. More Amaranth Species A. cruentus A. caudatus

56. Triticale On left – wheat, triticale, rye

57. The Trouble with Tribbles

58. Star fruit – Averrhoa carambola

59. Pinyon Pine – Pinus edulis

60. Stone Pine – Pinus pinea

61. Pine nuts or pignoli – from Pinus edulis

62. Kiwi Fruit – Actinidia chinensis

63. Kiwi fruit cultivation

64. Taro – Colocasia esculenta

65. Taro harvest - Hawaii

66. Taro corms

67. Tamarind – Tamarindus indica

68. Tamarind Fruits

69. Tamarind based sauces

70. Tamarinido Drinks