Temporarily leaving Gary Nabhan at Siwa Oasis, we rejoin Vavilov as he makes his way into Abyssinia.
December
1926
After the lengthy procedure of passing through the Suez Canal, the steamer proceeded into the calm Red Sea with its truly yellowish-red water. Both the eastern and western shores are uninhabited. As is well-known, all agriculture in Egypt is concentrated within a narrow belt along the Nile. [1] The enormous amount of material collected by my assistant Gudzoni and later on investigated by myself revealed a specific cultivated flora of Egypt, which is remarkably different from that of the Mediterranean area.
The desert nature and the irrigation of the crops have here resulted in peculiar forms of fast-ripening, low-growing grasses, amazingly susceptible to diseases and differing in this respect from the typical Mediterranean ones. [2] But, on the whole, Egyptian grain belongs to the Mediterranean crops in a wide sense, with predominantly hard wheat and hexastichous [six-rowed] barley. Among original crops only berseem clover (Trifolium alexandrinum) and the so-called Egyptian cotton, which was developed here during the last century from the long-staple American cotton (Gossypium barbadense), imported there, can be mentioned. [3]
- Except, of course, for the agriculture at the oases. [↩]
- Has this been confirmed? Are there any studies that compare disease susceptibility of Egyptian landraces with others? [↩]
- See Unravelling cotton’s domestication for an up-to-date account. [↩]
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