From Collection to Cultivation |

A USDA notice featuring Pestina, wearing a grass skirt and lei

Doctoral student Erinn Campbell publishes on "Pestina" and the history of invasive pest management

26 July 2024

In a new article, Wellcome funded doctoral student Erinn E. Campbell introduces readers to Pestina, a "bug girl" who served as the USDA's mascot for cross-broder plant pest awareness in the mid 20th century. As Campbell's analysis reveals, Pestina – once described by the agency as "coquettish, hitchhiking bug" – reveals as...

Loss and recovery: the story of chile tabiche

4 May 2024

What does the loss of crop diversity look like on the ground? Project affiliate and HPS doctoral student Daniela Scalvo and her collaborators Lucía Pérez Volkow and Emilio Hernández Martínez describe the case of chile tabiche in a community in Mexico in a new publication, "El chile tabiche: memoria, reencuentro y acción...

Winter 2023 Project Update

8 January 2024

Read our Winter 2023 Project Update to learn about recent activities of the project and its many researchers. To subscribe to our newsletter, email us at hps-cultivation@lists.cam.ac.uk

Collection to Cultivation in Plants, People, Planet

28 December 2023

Associates of the Collection to Cultivation project feature as key contributors to a forthcoming special issue of the journal Plants, People, Planet on the history of crops and the future of food. You can check out a few articles that have been released in Early View over the past few months: Tad Brown on imperial science...

Peanuts in the shell, drying in and around a basket

New study of peanut packaging, intellectual property, and the making of modern food marketing by postdoc Tad Brown

19 September 2023

In an article newly published in Enterprise & Society , postdoctoral research fellow Tad Brown offers a lively history of contests over patents, trademarks, and control of the U.S. peanut market. Zooming in on the seemingly humble wrapper, he shows "how intellectual property became indispensable to peanut sales" — and...

From Collection to Cultivation in the journal Agricultural History

29 August 2023

The August 2023 issue of Agricultural History features new research by two members of the From Collection to Cultivation collective. Doctoral student Leo Chu takes readers on a tour of Taiwanese politics and agriculture through his history of the Asian Vegetable Research and Development Center and its relationship to the...

Doctoral student Daniela Sclavo publishes on gender in Mexican ethnobotanical research

21 August 2023

In a forthcoming special issue of The Journal of Ethnobotany , a contribution by project associate and HPS doctoral student Daniela Sclavo reveals the gendered assumptions built into pioneering ethnobotanical research in Mexico. As she argues, the first generation of Mexican ethnobotanists "placed women as part of the...

Pile of reddish green pimento-like peppers

Researcher Tad Brown on crop names, vegetable marketing, and the pimento pepper

20 August 2023

What's in a (crop) name? Tad Brown asks and answers that question with respect to the history of varieties of peppers grown in the southern United States in a new article, just published in History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences . Situating the history of crop naming in the larger histories of botany and taxonomy...

Rows of potatoes growing in a field, with exposed brown soil between the bushy green plants.

A Historical Perspective on the UK's Precision Breeding Bill by doctoral student Hitesh Pant

9 May 2023

Wondering whether and how "precision breeding" serves food security goals in the United Kingdom and beyond? Team member Hitesh Pant puts that question in historical perspective in a new article in the Cambridge Journal of Science and Policy. As his analysis suggests, "... unless the small farmers at the centre of the food...

Rows of corn growing in an open field, with green leaves and golden tassels. Photo by Fishhawk, courtesy of Oregon State University

Project PI Helen Curry explores the politics of hybrid seed histories

5 April 2023

In an article recently published in the Journal of Peasant Studies , project PI Helen Anne Curry explores the histories of hybrid seeds circulated by scientists and activists and especially the political work these accomplish. As she argues in the paper, the singular history of F1 hybrid corn inflected understandings of...

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