Tintern Abbey

On a recent (and my very first) trip to Wales, I spotted a sign for Tinern Abbey and couldn't resist taking the detour to see it. Tintern Abbey is located on the bank of the river Wye, which forms the border between Wales and England. The Abbey was founded in 1131 and fell into disrepair in 1536.

William Wordsworth's poem often referred to as Tintern Abbey, but actually entitled Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey on Revisiting the Banks of the River Wye, written in 1798, celebrates the beauty of the Wye. The poem has been a favorite of mine for years. Here is an excerpt:

Therefore let the moon

Shine on thee in thy solitary walk;

And let the misty mountain-winds be free

To blow against thee: and, in after years,

When these wild ecstasies shall be matured

Into a sober pleasure; when thy mind

Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms,
Thy memory be as a dwelling-place
For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh! then,
If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief,
Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts
Of tender joy wilt thou remember me,
And these my exhortations! Nor, perchance --
If I should be where I no more can hear
Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams
Of past existence -- wilt thou then forget
That on the banks of this delightful stream
We stood together.

Taro Reading

Yesterday I handed in my Master’s Thesis on the use of Archaeogenetic techniques in studies of crop domestication and dispersal in Oceania,which includes a case study I conducted (with plenty of guidance and support from my supervisor Dr. Harriet Hunt, for which I am very grateful!) on the genetics of taro.

To get a feel for what its about, here’s the abstract:

To date, 27 polymorphic microsatellite markers have been developed for assessing the diversity of cultivated taro, Colocasia esculenta L. Schott, populations in Southeast Asia and Oceania, for the purposes of enhancing cultivation, particularly in regards to disease resistance. This study evaluates the efficacy of these markers for archaeogenetic studies on the domestication, development, and dispersal of taro in Oceania.

Here, microsatellite markers are used to evaluate genetic diversity and reproductive strategy in a wild-type C. esculenta population from Queensland, Australia. Microsatellite polymorphisms revealed that genetic diversity and reproductive strategy varied across the population due to variations in microclimates.

The ability of microsatellite markers to detect polymorphisms and meaningful genetic variation across the Australian taro patch studied, as well as between the Australia population and a set of samples from Papua New Guinea, demonstrate the capability of microsatellite markers to reveal information about diversity and relatedness in archaeogenetic studies. The findings here suggest that microsatellite markers have the potential to address outstanding questions about the domestication and dispersal of taro in Oceania and, in turn, about early agriculture in the region.

Cultivated taro from the Maui Nui Botanical Gardens, Hawaii. Morphological variation (which reflects some, but not all, genetic variation) can be seen in the purple/red petioles on the left and the green ones on the right. Image provided by Forest & Kim Starr via a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Microsatellite polymorphism at a single locus in two heterozygous individuals.

We’re hoping to turn it into an article for publication, so stay tuned for updates on that!