Seed-saving of diversity and autonomy in Portugal
The expression “perdi-lhe o inço!” is used in the Algarve (South Portugal) to indicate that the seeds (as well as seedlings or other propagation material) of a certain variety have been lost. In Alto Minho it is also customary to say “olha, já me desinçei disto!”,...
Evolution of soil perception through the work of Gabriel Alonso de Herrera (16th – 19th centuries)
In 1513, Gabriel Alonso de Herrera published the Work of Agriculture, considered the first treatise written in Spanish that systematised practical farming knowledge in the form of a manual. Its topics include the breeding of several domestic animals, the cultivation...
Archaeology of wine in Roman Lusitania
Phoenician traders from the region of what is now Lebanon probably brought the first wine to the Iberian Peninsula in the 9th-8th century B.C. After this, the first vines appeared in the Phoenician and Greek colonies founded in the southern coast of Iberia,...
Long-term research and transdisciplinarity: crossing boundaries to better understand the present
The ReSEED Project celebrates in November 2021 the third anniversary of a research path taken in a long-term and transdisciplinary perspective. Starting from the first one, you can ask: how far the project goes back to define this investigation as a long-term one? The...
What can be learned from the plants represented in museum collections?
Plants are represented in art either with a symbolic purpose within a narrative or simply as a decorative element. A considerable degree of subjectivity is acceptable since artists can favour creativity rather than realism and their main goal is not to convey precise...
The everyday challenges of Portuguese semi-industrial confectionery
In 2005 Rita João, Pedro Ferreira and I began researching the design of semi-industrial Portuguese confectionery, a term we coined to characterise the kind of one-portion, sweet pastries and cakes sold across Portugal as “Fabrico Próprio.” Meaning “Own Production,”...
Epic narratives of the Green Revolution: perspectives from Brazil, China and India
The Green Revolution (GR) is often portrayed as the advent of scientific and technological modernity in agriculture, which helped countries to avert famines and revert food deficits. Unfolding between the late 1940s and 1980s, the GR was a state-led process that...
Plants, dunes and people: coasts as entangled environments
In May, ReSEED project published a tweet about a conference on seeds and travelling plants. The tweet said and I quote: “European navigators didn´t travel empty-handed. They took & brought back different plants”. When I read this, I knew it was the best way to...
“Plantations are back”: palm oil in São Tomé
Driving south through São Tomé’s national road n. 2 we are welcomed by “the flourishing palm groves of Agripalma”. Oil palms reign supreme over that territory, creating a green pattern of staggering geometric regularity. When the fog lifts, it is possible to see the...
The revival of taxonomy: the importance of historical data and multidisciplinary approaches
Taxonomy is the science entrusted to understand, document, and describe biodiversity. In the last few years, taxonomy started receiving renewed attention by the scientific community, mainly due to the fact that 1) much of the world’s biodiversity is disappearing even...
The Seeding Ideas blog was published monthly from November 2019 to October 2023. The Editorial Board was composed of ReSEED team members. Publication and editing were coordinated by Caroline Delmazo. We aimed to share ideas, discussions, and findings from our research. Besides the team members and collaborators, we invited researchers from diverse scientific fields to contribute to this amazing interdisciplinary journey. We thank all authors and readers!