August
1926

From Rabat I went to Casablanca, which is also situated on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean and differs little from Rabat as far as conditions are concerned. Both Rabat and Casablanca are new cities, built by the French in Arabian style with flat roofs. But they have adopted only the building style from the Arabs; all the rest is like Europe. From Casablanca I travelled into the Atlas mountains, to the oasis of Marrakesh, with the intention of reaching, if possible, areas with montane crops in the Atlas mountains

Some of the foremost experts on Vicia taxonomy have reviewed the “confused” taxonomic relations of the fava bean with its allies, and have concluded that “after extensive taxonomic investigation the progenitor has not been identified.” Given how much interest there has been in the species in recent decades, it seems unlikely that the ancestral species has been found yet not recognized. So perhaps it has not yet been found. If the wild relative does exist, it is likely to be growing either in the Near East or in Afghanistan, “where the most primitive forms of V. faba occur”. The Near East has been scoured by collecting missions. That leaves Afghanistan. Maxted and his colleagues describe the country as “seriously under-collected” and urge that “forage legume collections in this area should be given a high priority.” There are, of course, other priorities there right now, but that shouldn’t stop a visit by an intrepid Seed Hunter at some point.

Why does any of this matter? Because faba beans matter. According to FAO, in 2006, 2.6 million ha were planted and 4.6 million tonnes were harvested, with about 1.05 million ha planted with faba bean in China alone. Ethiopia, Morocco and Australia cultivate 427,719, 169,000 and 153,000 ha, respectively. Unlike other grain legumes, world trade in faba beans is significantly lower, with most produce consumed locally, where it is an important source of protein. Breeders and farmers looking to improve the performance of faba beans could turn to wild relatives, but the known wild relatives have different numbers of chromosomes from the cultivated types, and the survival of crosses is very poor. The true progenitor might act as a bridge to transfer useful traits from wild relatives into cultivated V. faba.

As for the existing diversity in the species most closely related to V. faba, things are not looking good. Nigel Maxted and Shelagh Kell, in a comprehensive report on crop wild relatives for the FAO Commission on Genetic Resources recommend:

• the establishment of new reserves in Syria and Turkey for the active conservation of V. faba’s closest wild relatives;
• systematic collection of those wild relatives for genebank conservation;
• a continued hunt for a possible true ancestor, focussed on southeast Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan;
• on-farm projects to conserve the existing diversity of faba beans, “particularly in areas with less developed agriculture”;
• and a specific effort to relocate and collect one of V. faba’s most primitive relatives, V. faba subsp paucijuga, which might still be found in Afghanistan, India and Pakistan.

That’s enough to be getting on with.

August
1926

The capital of Morocco is Rabat, where an agricultural research station and the Department of Agriculture are located. The head of the station, Dr. Miège, was well-known to me from the literature. He is the author of original papers on cultivated plants. I acquainted myself in detail with the Moroccan material amassed at the station and with the collections representing mainly samples of local hard wheats and local barley.

Rabat is situated on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean and is distinguished by a mild coastal climate. Crops are not irrigated there. In essence the area belongs to the typical Mediterranean region. The large-spiked and large-grained forms are similar to the typical, coastal Algerian assortment. Thanks to the previous work of the American plant introducer Scoffield, who thoroughly researched the bread grasses of Algeria and the papers by Ducellier, Trabut and Miège, as well Boeuf in Tunisia, the composition of the local crops is very well known. In general, this is a realm of Mediterranean hard wheat with a rare admixture of other species, including hexastichous barley. At the station, research on various crops is conducted. This is a kind of a centre of introduction, which is constantly widening its scope. A small but modest staff of French research workers carry out an enormous investigative and agronomical work of first-class importance for agriculture.

The numerous Algerian varieties of the grape have been investigated and selection has been made of those which seem most promising. One of of these, popularized by Trabut and known to the French colonists as “Clairette egreneuse,” is now one of the leading white wine grapes of the colony.

It still is. Or was in 1953. Who knows.

August
1926

I went to Morocco by bus, the usual mode of travelling in Algeria and Morocco, and was lucky to be able to familiarize myself within a short time (10-12 days) with the main agricultural areas of that country. Along the road from Algeria I passed extensive areas of vineyards. This is a large, industrial crop, the most profitable one of this French colony. The Department of Agriculture attaches the greatest importance to this type of agriculture and the attention of the most enterprising colonizers is focused on it. The plantations are in a well-cultivated condition, with the plants correctly pruned and tied to trellises. …

The bus drove along specially constructed roads with a speed of up to 40 kmph, quickly passing through the desert and semi-desert areas of Morocco. A wide expanse of northern Morocco is represented by almost unpopulated areas with insignificant crops but also by foothills of mountain ranges, mainly on the southern side. The agriculture of northern Morocco is concentrated exclusively within oases.

Before me spread the first large oasis, surrounding the city of Fez. It is an old city with towers and ruins. There are hundreds of houses surrounded by gardens and wide areas of irrigated fields. It is a realm of hard wheat. A survey of the grain on the market revealed the presence there of forms different from the Mediterranean ones. The nature of the oasis has put its imprint on them. An influence of southwestern Asia can also be perceived.

Trabut and his student and successor [Ducellier], now unfortunately deceased, possessed an incredible knowledge of the nature of this country. Their encyclopedic knowledge allowed me to confidently orient myself within a short time among the assemblage of cultivated plants, to pick out the necessary material and to work out the evolutionary problems that are related to the origin of cultivated plants within the flora of northern Africa.

But who is this Trabut? Almost the only source of information in English is an appreciation written by T.H. Kearney when Trabut was awarded the Frank Meyer Memorial Medal for distinguished service in Plant Introduction. Some extracts:

Louis Trabut was born in 1853 at Chambery in the beautiful mountain district of southeastern France. During his period of military service he was stationed in Algeria and found the country so much to his liking that after leaving the army he took up his residence in the colony which he has served so devotedly ever since. During the early years of his residence in Algeria he practiced medicine and has long held the professorship of botany in the School of Medicine of the
University of Algiers. …

Algeria, which faces France on the southern shore of the Mediterranean, was once a Roman colony and was in a high state of development at the beginning of the Christian era. Northern Africa was long the granary of the Roman Empire and was renowned also for its extensive vineyards and orchards. Traces of the advanced state of agriculture at that epoch are still to be seen in the numerous ruins of irrigation works and of mills for extracting olive oil. The Arab invasion swept away this ancient culture and much of the country was turned into a desert. In this condition it remained until the French occupation began, less than a century ago.

For more than a thousand years agriculture and horticulture were carried on almost exclusively by the Berbers, relics of the indigenous population who had sought refuge in remote mountain districts; the Arabs, essentially a nomadic and pastoral people, preferring to inhabit the plains and lowlands. The isolation and inaccessibility of the Berber communities were peculiarly favorable to the development and propagation of numerous varieties of cultivated plants. The result is seen to-day in the myriad races of the grape, fig, olive, apricot, and walnut grown in Morocco, Algeria, and Tunis.

Every little group of mountains, one might almost say every mountain village, has its peculiar varieties. In addition to the varieties now in cultivation, numbers exist in a half-wild state which are doubtless relics of ancient cultivation. There are also in northern Africa truly indigenous relatives of many of the cultivated plants. The country is therefore a storehouse of species and varieties whose utilization as resistant stocks whereon to graft more tender forms, or as material for improvement by selection and hybridization, offers a wonderful opportunity to the plant introducer and plant breeder.

A systematic study of the numerous races of wheat grown by the natives, several of which often are found in the same field, resulted in the segregation of the Pélissier variety, a black bearded wheat of the durum type, now extensively cultivated in Algeria. Locally grown varieties of oats, highly resistant to rust, have been discovered and popularized. …

Still more striking, perhaps, have been the results attained with orchard crops. … These investigations led to the interesting discovery that in varieties of fruit trees which are habitually seed-propagated by the Kabyle mountaineers, the seedlings are much truer to type than is the case with the standard vegetatively propagated varieties.

…

Bersim or Alexandrian clover, the most valuable forage plant of the Nile Delta, has been acclimatized after years of effort through the discovery and segregation of a strain resistant to low temperatures. With a view to fostering the cultivation of cotton and tobacco in Algeria, collections of the leading varieties of these crops have been assembled and progress is being made in the development by selection and hybridization of races adapted to the local conditions.

Trabut has discovered several natural hybrids between different species of Eucalyptus, a tree which is exten- sively grown in Algeria. One of these, named in his honor Eucalyptus Trabuti, gives a wood suitable for cabinetmaking and said to resemble mahogany. Another hybrid, E. algeriensis Trabut, he has found to be self-sown, which is not the case with other members of the genus in Algeria. Superior and more productive races of the camphor tree and of the soapberry tree have been developed by selection.

…

CONTRIBUTIONS TO AMERICAN AGRICULTURE

There is no little resemblance in climate and in the native and cultivated vegetation between Algeria and the southwestern United States. The Mediterranean littoral, with its chaparral-clad hillsides and its mountain forests of live-oak and pine, finds its counterpart in the coast region of California. The interior plateau, covered largely with coarse bunch grass, resembles the high plains of New Mexico, and the vast Sahara is reproduced on a smaller scale in the deserts of southeastern California. This similarity of conditions has made the North African colony a Mecca of agricultural explorers in search of plants for introduction into the southwestern United States. Cooperative relations with Dr. Trabut were established more than twenty years ago by Walter T. Swingle and David Fairchild of the Bureau of Plant Industry, and as a result hundreds of Algerian plants have been brought to this country.

Numerous but unsuccessful efforts had been made to produce the fine Smyrna fig in California, the reason for the earlier failures having been the absence of the tiny insect (Blastophaga) which caprifies or pollinates the female flowers. With the aid of Dr. Trabut, Blastophaga finally was introduced successfully by Mr. Swingle and Smyrna fig production is now a thriving industry in California. Trabut has also co-operated enthusiastically in the introduction of numerous varieties of dates from the North African deserts and has the credit of inventing an effective method of maturing the fruit on the tree by enclosing the clusters in paper bags.

Pélissier wheat, one of Trabut’s selections, ranks among the best of the hard wheats tested in Montana by the Office of Cereal Investigations of the Bureau of Plant Industry and has reached the stage of commercial production in that state. It appears to be especially suitable for the manufacture of macaroni and semolina. …

Great as is the value, actual or potential, of the plants introduced or bred by Dr. Trabut, the inspiration of his career is after all his greatest gift to humanity. He has set a priceless example in devoting his brilliant, highly-trained, well-stored mind to the lifelong service of his countrymen and of all mankind.

Many of us who are interested in the history of agriculture have a favourite quote from Jean Henri Fabre:
“History … celebrates the battle-fields whereon we meet our death, it scorns to speak of the ploughed fields whereby we thrive; it knows the names of the kings’ bastards, it cannot tell us the origin of wheat. That is the way of human folly.“
I wish I could find out more about the history of date growing in California and Australia, both of which owe a huge debt to Trabut; this will have to do for now. Vavilov noted his debt to Trabut before heading off to Morocco. I hope to have given the man his due, before we too follow Vavilov west.

July
1926

Tiaret is a centre of Arabian culture and Arabian schools and mosques. As I left the town, I passed a remarkable mosque, an example of splendid arts with amazing designs of strikingly harmonizing lines, arches and ornaments. It was built several centuries ago and is witness to the exceptional level of the Arabian arts of the past. Around it were the usual primitive villages and filthy reservoirs. The children were afflicted with trachoma. The rudimentary agriculture was of a haphazard nature. Again I happened to arrive on a market day. On beautifully prancing, splendid horses, smartly turned out Arabs, mostly with light-coloured skin and wearing enormous, metre-wide straw hats and burnooses, came together in the village. Frequently one could see horsemen wearing two hats, one on top of another, apparently to be chic. The dimension of the hats was hardly due to necessity, but was rather an exaggerated fashion.

Both the most primitive and the greatest of the arts all meet here; all this contradiction amazed me and was hard to understand. In any case, on the whole, when travelling around in Syria and Palestine and, later on, in Tunisia and Morocco, it was difficult not to be aware of the ancient and outstanding Arabian civilization represented by immortal geographers, Arabian arts and the Mauritanian style (typical of Africa). In the same way, during a visit to Greece, it is difficult to understand how Athens, which now holds such an insignificant position within the modern world, could once occupy such a significant place among the advanced ancient civilizations. The ancient time remains an unsurpassed example of an era of important art and sciences, covering all subjects from the medicine of Hippocrates and the natural sciences of Aristotle to the history of Herodotos and Strabo. Why, when conditions are more favourable, has there in essence been such an enormous downfall and degradation instead of progress?

July
1926

A later itinerary through Algeria, planned together with Trabut, [Ducellier] and the Department of Agriculture on the basis of the excellent agronomic map published by the French Department of Agriculture, needed in particular to include the areas where bread grains are cultivated. The time for collecting was approaching. We selected the areas of Setif, Timgad and Tiaret which are settled by Arabs. This was the realm of hard wheat, represented by a definitely Mediterranean group with large spikes and large grains, distinct from our usual Soviet ‘Gamov’ and ‘Kuban’ types. Here a considerable area under cereals is also cultivated by French colonists. The agrotechnology is simple: fallow alternating with crops of wheat and, most often, barley. The spaciousness of the land still allows extensive utilization of single crops covering large areas. The sowing is, as a rule, done in the autumn, during the rainy period at the end of October into November. Strange to say, the Arabian settlers of this area are not always inclined to agriculture but prefer an easier way to earn an income, by trading.

July
1926

The Kabyle mountains are sharply different with respect to all the types of agriculture. The ancient settlements of the Kabyles are concentrated there. The Kabyles are closely related to the Berbers, use a language different from Arabic and have neat houses covered by tiles instead of the flat-roofed houses of the Arabs.

Everything here spoke of a comparatively high state of culture, typical of the montane and highland areas of the Mediterranean. The villages of the Kabyles resemble Greek villages. The arable land is carefully utilized for field crops and vegetables. The study of the assortment of cultivated plants immediately showed a sharp distinction from the strictly Mediterranean areas. The beans, lentils, peas and vetches grown in the Kabyle villages differ by having small and dark seeds, which to a considerable extent were familiar to me and similar to the Asiatic forms distributed in Iran, Inner Asia and Afghanistan. Soft wheat was grown here in large amounts. It might be possible to trace its connection with southwestern Asia to a kind of relic, which indicates a past, distant relationship between the settlers of the montane areas of northern Africa and the agricultural peoples who settled southwestern Asia.

The wild flora of the Kabyle mountains has a multitude of species which are relatives of those cultivated species. Here it is to some extent possible to solve the riddle of the origin of some cultivated plants. It was just here that Trabut found the interesting wild bean mentioned above, Vicia pliniana (Trabut) Muratova, which undoubtedly is genetically especially closely related to the cultivated forms of the small-seeded, black beans of Afghanistan and India. In any case, it is absolutely necessary to appreciate the differentiation of northern Africa into montane, coastal and foothill areas. The mountain area appears more ancient and the coastal one more youthful. However, after thousands of years of cultivation and to a great extent passing through an evolution independent from that of the Asiatic mountain forms, the beans are tied not by a straight but a crooked path to the wideranging evolution of the Mediterranean cultivated vegetation.

BBC news kicked off with a slideshow dedicated to Kazakhstan’s wild apples last Monday.

This picture shows some of the surviving wild apple forests in the Tien Shan mountains of southern Kazakhstan, but you’ll have to visit the BBC’s web site to see the rest and find out why they are in the news again.

Then yesterday Nick Saltmarsh published an article on the history of the apple on his blog The Tracing Paper, specifically making the connections between the far-off forests of Kyrgyzstan and his local apple varieties. Most of those local varieties will not be familiar even to local people, because suppliers such as supermarkets disdain to deal in them, but Saltmarsh gives some good tips about how to go about tasting the full range of apple diversity.