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A blog about plants for who eats, studies and loves them; for those who can grow them and who can't; for who protects and admire them, for who takes them as a present to their girlfriends; to tell their stories and disclose their secrets to who's not aware of their presence; for who loves green, yellow, red and blue; for those who are fascinated by the capacity plants had in colonizing Earth and make an habitable planet out of it; to find out what they can teach and how much of our history is intertwined with their. Dedicated to our best housemates on this planet.
Alice Breda
5 posts
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- August 31, 2016
- 10:58 AM
- 95 views
Why do we hate coriander?
by Alice Breda in la-Plumeria
In the morning you get up, trudge all the way to the sink, grab a bar of soap and rub it on your face. Sometimes, after you rinsed, you realize that some soap got into your mouth. The taste is nasty, pungent, more in your nose than on your tongue and it persists until you eat or drink something.
This sickening feeling doesn’t hit me only in my brightest mornings, but also every time in an ethnic restaurant or during a trip the cook decides to decorate my tacos or my curry with some chop........ Read more »
Eriksson, N., Wu, S., Do, C., Kiefer, A., Tung, J., Mountain, J., Hinds, D., & Francke, U. (2012) A genetic variant near olfactory receptor genes influences cilantro preference. Flavour, 1(1), 22. DOI: 10.1186/2044-7248-1-22
Callaway, E. (2012) Soapy taste of coriander linked to genetic variants. Nature. DOI: 10.1038/nature.2012.11398
- July 6, 2016
- 08:50 AM
- 386 views
Why do we eat spices?
by Alice Breda in la-Plumeria
I love curries. My favorite is Indian tikka masala which is prepared with tomato, yogurt and many different spices including turmeric, ginger, garlic, cardamom, cumin, paprika, cloves and cinnamon. But I’m not the only one, because the passion for spicy dishes is shared among humans of all regions and ages. We eat them fresh, dried, whole, ground, raw or cooked, and our love for these tasty substances led explorers such as Polo, Magellan and Columbus to undertake risky expeditions in searc........ Read more »
Sherman, P., & Billing, J. (1999) Darwinian Gastronomy: Why We Use Spices. BioScience, 49(6), 453. DOI: 10.2307/1313553
Billing J, & Sherman PW. (1998) Antimicrobial functions of spices: why some like it hot. The Quarterly review of biology, 73(1), 3-49. PMID: 9586227
- June 9, 2016
- 11:21 AM
- 225 views
Back to life – Resurrection plants and the future of food
by Alice Breda in la-Plumeria
Life on Earth was born in water. Then, about half a billion years ago, the first organisms stare colonizing lands that offered new spaces, less predators and, in time, abundant oxygen and nutrients. Still, the indissoluble bond that living organisms had with water remained, and in order to survive in this new environment plants and animals had to develop anatomical, physiological and behavioral adaptations to better obtain, manage and save water. Plant bodies, as well as ours, are mostly made of........ Read more »
Moore, J., Le, N., Brandt, W., Driouich, A., & Farrant, J. (2009) Towards a systems-based understanding of plant desiccation tolerance. Trends in Plant Science, 14(2), 110-117. DOI: 10.1016/j.tplants.2008.11.007
- April 28, 2016
- 11:21 AM
- 128 views
A flower, a craze and the tulips bubble
by Alice Breda in la-Plumeria
In the middle of what historians call the “Age of Reason”, in a solid, thrifty and Calvinist nation, not far from a busy Cartesius involved in the writing of his Principia philosophiae to lay the foundation of modern math and phylosophy, a whole country was hit by a craze that would almost lead to its financial crisis: the tulipomania.
This story begins few centuries earlier in Turkey, when tulips didn’t appear yet in any european Encyclopedia. The Ottomans admired the abili........ Read more »
Lesnaw, J., & Ghabrial, S. (2000) Tulip Breaking: Past, Present, and Future. Plant Disease, 84(10), 1052-1060. DOI: 10.1094/PDIS.2000.84.10.1052
- February 25, 2016
- 11:21 AM
- 151 views
Why we may lose bananas, again
by Alice Breda in la-Plumeria
Bananas are yellow, smiling and fluorescent, they are used as a unit to measure low doses of radioactivity and over a hundred million tons of them are eaten in the world every year. However, a rapidly spreading disease is threatening the existence of this beloved fruit that might completely from the market. And it’s not the first time.
The history of bananas began in South East Asia, where highest diversity of wild species and cultivated varieties is still present. Some of them are red,........ Read more »
Ordonez, N., Seidl, M., Waalwijk, C., Drenth, A., Kilian, A., Thomma, B., Ploetz, R., & Kema, G. (2015) Worse Comes to Worst: Bananas and Panama Disease—When Plant and Pathogen Clones Meet. PLOS Pathogens, 11(11). DOI: 10.1371/journal.ppat.1005197
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