all posts Rescuing seed’s heritage: looking for words to open the black box There is a paradox between the centrality of cultivated seeds to guarantee human resilience and the scant historical knowledge available on these seeds. Since the Neolithic, domesticated...
all posts Rethinking agricultural specialization The management of diversity – related to human activities and plant-animal interactions – has ensured both the stability and the transformation of a great variety of farming systems in different geographical and...
all posts The Salvador family’s contribution to the botany in the Iberian Peninsula The Salvador family was a well-known family of apothecaries from Barcelona, who developed their work around naturalism between the 17th and 19th centuries. They collected samples...
all posts Spelt wheat in Iberia: from the East came a northern crop The introduction of spelt in Iberia has been attributed to Germanic people and the Romans. However, we know now it was cultivated before that, at least since the 5th century BC, in the northernmost...
all posts Fieldwork notes on the rye culture in the South of Portugal Rye field. Photo: Luísa Ricardo/Municipality of Tavira, 2023 I am in the middle of a rye field waving in the wind. It’s almost harvest time. I am writing from the South of Portugal, Northeast...
all posts Variability and dynamics of Nordic rye In the late medieval period, cereal cultivation and consumption in Scandinavia changed. After almost 2000 years of having barley (Hordeum vulgare) as the primary grain crop, the use of rye (Secale cereale) increased...
