
The rise of Africa’s super vegetables - danboarder
http://www.nature.com/news/the-rise-of-africa-s-super-vegetables-1.17712
======
netcan
There seems to be a significant negative side effect to domestication, and
then super-domestication of modern breed optimization and/or genetic
engineering.

It kind of makes sense. Whether improvement happens slowly as farmers turn
some wild grass into maize with a cultivar 100X the size of a wild variety or
happens rapidly as modern breeders optimize for traits on a quick cycle,
domestication is narrow optimization. The more you optimize a sales team for
sales, the more other things (like knowing what they're selling) de-optimize.

Greyhounds are optimized exclusively for speed. So are thoroughbred horses.
These breeds are fast, but often have issues with every other trait. Health,
longevity, personality. They're not social compared to a foxhound, trainable
compared to a labrador, strong compared to a husky, etc. They are also worse
on all these scales than a wolf or a mutt, who have not been optimized for any
specific trait.

Modern vegetables we have optimized them for ease of cultivation and shelf
life. Modern tomatoes ripen all at once, so they're easy to pick and they last
10X longer, to reduce spoilage. Most taste pretty bad (comparatively), because
they have not been optimized for taste.

My point is that (A) we don't really have a very solid understanding of what
makes green vegetables healthful and (B) even if we did we are not optimizing
for healthiness. (C) In an optimization environment, not optimizing = de-
optimizing.

TLDR: Maybe the advantage of traditional greens, or part of the advantage is
that these are (currently) non commercial breeds that haven't been "improved"
yet.

~~~
gadders
>>Greyhounds are optimized exclusively for speed. So are thoroughbred horses.
These breeds are fast, but often have issues with every other trait. Health,
longevity, personality.

I don't think you have come across many greyhounds. They are by and large
lovely dogs with a great personality.

~~~
Retric
Greyhounds tend to be more hyper than other breeds which is generally
considered a negative personality trait. They can still be great dogs, but so
can the vast majority of dogs out there.

The point is breeders cared less about hyper than they did speed.

------
avighnay
These very same plants used to be very common in Indian cuisine too...

Solanum nigrum -
[http://www.flowersofindia.net/catalog/slides/Black%20Nightsh...](http://www.flowersofindia.net/catalog/slides/Black%20Nightshade.html)
Was a common home cooked item in Tamil Nadu (South India) called Manathakali
Keerai in Tamil

Vigna unguiculata - called Karamani in Tamil, is also a very common vegetable
in home cuisine of Tamil Nadu
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oifwbfSrKWA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oifwbfSrKWA)

Corchorus olitorius -
[http://www.flowersofindia.net/catalog/slides/Nalta%20Jute.ht...](http://www.flowersofindia.net/catalog/slides/Nalta%20Jute.html)
called Punakku, however is used only as traditional cattle feed and considered
lowly for human consumption for unknown reasons and is a slang used to insult
a person for foolishness or low IQ

Amaranthus - Mollai Keerai Moringa oleifera - Murungai, very popular and can
be seen grown in most homes in rural/semi-urban Tamilnadu, and very popular in
Sambhar - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKT--
cbBmhk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKT--cbBmhk)

~~~
zkar
Nice done connection references to the Indian subcontinent. Appreciate the
links.

------
unwind
Interesting.

The article didn't try (as far as I saw) to say anything about the flavor of
nighthade, which would have been interesting (as a Northern European, I have
no idea if I can source this locally).

The Wikipedia page
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_nightshade](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_nightshade))
said:

 _The leaves also contain high levels of vitamin A, B, and C, and phenolics
and alkaloids, including cocaine, quinine, nicotine, and morphine_

which was also interesting. I wonder if those levels are high enough to make
the plant controversial, didn't do any further research.

~~~
kedean
The article does mention a few times that all of the vegetables in question
are dark leafy greens, so they are extremely bitter. That's why so much effort
is being put into recipe research, they aren't particularly palatable veggies
on their own.

~~~
beat
Palatable is also a cultural bias. You like familiar flavors and dislike
unfamiliar flavors, generally. (I sometimes sum this up as "Asians ferment
soybeans and Europeans think it's disgusting. Europeans ferment milk and
Asians think it's disgusting.")

One big problem I've noticed is that American tastes are so strongly driven by
junk food and highly processed factory products that actual _fresh vegetables_
taste alien and weird.

------
jqm
I didn't know one could eat Solanums. I was always under the impression that
nightshade (and the foliage of most members of the Solanaceae family) were
just about all poisonous to some extent.

From Wikipedia: "The species most commonly called nightshade in North America
and Britain is Solanum dulcamara, also called bittersweet or woody nightshade.
Its foliage and egg-shaped red berries are poisonous, the active principle
being solanine, which can cause convulsions and death if taken in large doses.
The black nightshade (S. nigrum) is also generally considered poisonous, but
its fully ripened fruit and foliage are cooked and eaten in some areas."

This family also contains a fair amount of psychoactive members most of which
are also poisonous at the right dose. (Tobacco and Jimson Weed for instance
and in fact some
Solanums...[http://sarahannelawless.com/2010/05/10/solanum/](http://sarahannelawless.com/2010/05/10/solanum/)
).

But.. there is nightshade, for sale in the market in the picture. My world
view on Solanums has been shattered.

------
giltleaf
The agroecological benefits for this type of research are astounding. If you
look at pictures of teosinte (O.G. corn) and compare it to modern varieties,
the gains in terms of grain size (for feed corn), productivity, and resilience
are astounding. Granted, those gains come from 1000's of years of agricultural
evolution and a relatively new agro-industrial research partnership, but the
fact remains that if we were to support agroecological solutions, like
researching Africa's "super vegetables," the net benefits for our global food
systems are potentially as important as the Green Revolution.

Edit: However, no matter what happens, it's important to always frame this
research in terms of what people and communities, not businesses, actually
want, and to keep in mind local food sovereignty.

------
beat
Seed preservation and keeping gene banks is critical to the long-term food
system. As the article points out, agribusiness is good for yield and cost,
but bad for diversity. And lack of diversity leads to drastic collapse.

