Dear Allan,
Your enquirer might find that Mike Ambrose at the John Innes Centre can
help. He manages the BBSRC (Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research
Council) cereals collection, amongst other things, which includes some
lovely British wheat, barley and oat landraces.
The collection can supply small amounts of germplasm for research. Of
course, there is a agreement to sign when receiving the seed, that states
it will not be re-distributed or used for commercial purposes.
At the moment I'm actually growing some Red Lammas (a tall 'old' breadwheat
variety) for sowing next autumn at West Stow Anglo-Saxon Village. It has
tillered very nicely, so the 30-40 grain looks like producing a rather
decent harvest this year (fingers-crossed!).
The following URLs ought to be useful... Mike's email address is on them.
General info
http://www.jic.ac.uk/germplas/Collections.htm
BBSRC cereals web-page, plus links to databases
http://www.jic.ac.uk/GERMPLAS/bbsrc_ce/index.htm
Possible open day 2008
http://www.jic.ac.uk/GERMPLAS/Cereal%20landraces.htm
Yours,
Rachel.
Rachel Ballantyne
PhD Candidate
Dept of Archaeology
University of Cambridge
On May 1 2008, Allan Hall wrote:
>Dear Colleagues
>
>I have been asked by someone undertaking an historic reconstruction at a
>place in Galloway, S.W. Scotland, for some guidance as to the 'food
>available in 1570', specifically with reference to grains.
>
> I have suggested that bread wheat, 6-row barley and oats, and probably
> also rye, would have been available but I made the mistake of suggesting
> that some of the crops, at least, might have been morphologically taller
> than those grown today... if my correspondent is (as I suspect) planning
> an exhibition, short-growing wheat and barley is NOT going to look
> authentic, I think.
>
> Of course, he is now asking for sources for tall-growing crops of the
> right kind (serves me right!). Does anyone have any ideas about this?
>
>Allan
>
>-- Dr Allan Hall, English Heritage Senior Research Fellow, Department of
>Archaeology, University of York, The King's Manor, York YO1 7EP, U.K. Tel.
>+44 1904 434950/fax: 433902
>
>(You can e-mail me on arh1 or biol8 (i.e. BIOL8 not BIO18!) - but arh1 is
>now preferred...)
>
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