XI. After harvesting: then, cleaning, sanitizing, drying

X. An introduction to the insects ALSO interested on the bean as food.

Seed-Feeding Mesquite Beetles
( A l g a r o b i u s p r o s o p i s a n d N e l t u m i u s a r i z o n e n s i s )
A natural enemy of MESQUITE (Prosopis species) in South Africa
11 D O S S I E R S O N B I O L O G I C A L C O N T R O L A G E N T S A V A I L A B L E T O A I D A L I E N P L A N T C O N T R O L
Description
These are small beetles (up to 5Êmm in length). Algarobius is a uniform
fawn colour with elytra (hardened fore wings) that are darker than
the rest of the body. Neltumius has a mottled black and white
patchwork pattern over its entire body. The beetles are distinctive
because the abdomen extends beyond the elytra. Their presence is
easily noticeable by the occurrence of neat round holes in the
mature seed pods of prosopis, both on the trees and on the ground.
Life Cycle
Grubs of both species develop in mature seeds within mesquite seed
pods. Eggs of Neltumius are glued singly on the surface of the pods
and shells may remain in place for several months after the eggs have
hatched. Algarobius eggs are laid in cracks and blemishes on the seed
pods. Each grub enters and entirely destroys a single mesquite seed
during its development. Pupation occurs within the hollowed out seed
and adults emerge through distinctive holes on the surface of the pods.
Feeding Damage
Only the seeds of mesquite within the seed pods are damaged by the
beetles. The seed pods and vegetative parts of the plants are not affected.
Impact on Mesquite
Although up to 95% of seeds produced by mesquite can be destroyed
by these seed-beetles, they are probably having very little impact
on the dynamics of mesquite invasions because seed pods are eaten
by livestock and game before the beetles can utilise and destroy
many of the seeds. As a result seed destruction by the beetles seldom
reaches very high levels. Most seeds are ingested and pass through
the gut of animals undamaged. Once dispersed in the veld, seeds
are no longer suitable as a food source for the beetles.
A u t h o r : J . H . H O F F M A N N , Z o o l o g y D e p a r t m e n t , U n i v e r s i t y o f C a p e Town, Rondebosch 7701
Patron in Chief:
Nelson Mandela
THE WORKING FOR WATER PROGRAMME
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IX. Natural Foods - value of mesquite bean

THE DESERT'S PERFECT FOODS

ALAN ALDA (NARRATION) We're on the Tohono O'Odham tribal reservation in Arizona. It's rainy and cold today, but most of the time it's baking hot and bone dry. The plants have evolved to thrive in such extremes, and the Tohono O'Odham people in turn based their way of life on the plants. It was a rich bounty - and I do mean "was," because by the 1940s widespread use of traditional foods was dying out. Today, only a few of the elders, like

FRANCIS MANUEL, are familiar with the old foods. This is Francis's daughter, Dolores.

DOLORES This is wild spinach. We've been eating it since we were little.

ALAN ALDA (NARRATION) Tortillas were once made with desert ingredients. Now the elders are saying it's time to revive the old ways.

ALAN ALDA Is this an attempt to go back totally to the food that used to be eaten? Or to just introduce some of it into the diet?

DANNY LOPEZ It is an attempt to kind of create an awareness to people that they have to change. Something has to be done.

ALAN ALDA (NARRATION) This is what something has to be done about. Caroline Jackson, who lives on the nearby Pima reservation, has diabetes. So do half of all adult Pima and Tohono O'Odham - 15 times the national average. The two tribes also have exceptionally high rates of obesity, even though their diets are average. Extensive study has suggested that in one special way these people are not average. They have what's called the thrifty gene, which allowed them to put on weight very efficiently during the desert's times of plenty, so they could get through the bad times. The problem is it's good times all the time now. Nowadays, like all Americans they get their food from a supermarket shelf. They spend a lot of time in front of the TV. And they drive practically everywhere. Only 50 years ago the two tribes were tough and active farmers, hunters and gatherers, with no obesity and no diabetes. Things began to break down when the region's water was pumped away to growing cities. And even though they still had the skills to gather wild food, or divert flash floods to their fields, it became impossible to resist adopting a typical American lifestyle.

ALAN ALDA So you make a brush out of this and you rub the fruit with it? And that gets the needles off?

DANNY LOPEZ Yeah, see the fruit's always sitting up here, you know, like that, and you brush 'em off, brush 'em off pretty good.

ALAN ALDA (NARRATION) A brush made from the creosote bush gets off the almost invisible coating of tiny, sharp spines. Prickly pear fruit and pads were important foods - although you had to avoid the poisonous seeds, Danny said.

DANNY LOPEZ That's a mesquite tree right here. See here's some that are dried, beans. They'd all be hanging, hanging on the trees, and the kids all walk by and pull them off and eat them

ALAN ALDA (NARRATION) Ground up mesquite pods gave a sweet and nutritious flour. They were good to just chew on, as well.

ALAN ALDA Taste it, yeah, can I? I'll just take off a little bit. I don't want to spoil it for somebody...

DOLORES Don't swallow the seeds too.

ALAN ALDA Don't swallow the seeds. What'll happen to me if I swallow…

DOLORES Same thing that happens when you eat the prickly pear with the seeds.

ALAN ALDA I have to go to the hospital.

DOLORES Yeah, give you an enema.

ALAN ALDA Boy, I'll tell ya, this program is really dangerous. It's all seeds. What do you mean, don't swallow the seeds? There's nothing but seeds here.

FRANCIS MANUEL Chew it.

ALAN ALDA I got to get rid of the seed. Wait a minute.

DOLORES Yeah.

FRANCIS MANUEL Yeah.

ALAN ALDA It's sweet. Sweet and chewy and the taste, like something that I know. It tastes like, you know what it tastes like? Like a Box of Cracker Jacks. You know, it's sweet and crunchy. It's a snack bush. Nice. Francis, how did you learn about all this?

FRANCIS MANUEL My grandmother tell me.

ALAN ALDA Your grandmother?

FRANCIS MANUEL When we were kids, uhuh. Yeah.

DANNY LOPEZ On this plant, the cholla buds grow.

ALAN ALDA (NARRATION) In spring, when the rains came, everyone had to gather cholla cactus buds.

ALAN ALDA So that's where they grow. And then if you don't pick it, it grows into this.

DANNY LOPEZ Yes, uhuh.

ALAN ALDA (NARRATION) Like mesquite pods, cholla buds were gathered, dried and stored in large quantities.

ALAN ALDA What is it that you eat off of this?

TONY JOHNSON Um. Saguaro fruit. It grows on the end of it, of the arms of the cactus.

ALAN ALDA Yeah.

TONY JOHNSON Usually it'll grow in bunches, you know, on each arm, all the way up into the top.

ALAN ALDA (NARRATION) Saguaro fruit was gathered in late June. Every family had its own long poles for reaching the fruit - poles made with the skeleton of the saguaro cactus itself. The desert for most of us looks to be a barren and inhospitable place, but for the Pima and Tohono O'Odham it was the source of life.

DANNY LOPEZ Our food came from the desert. We had to work for it, you know, it's a lot of work to go out and gather. When we planted, there was a lot of time in the field. Back then, we were people who were in good shape. Prior to 1960, there was no diabetes and then, but after that it just kinda came upon us. GROUP [Song]

ALAN ALDA (NARRATION) The blessing speaks of the pleasure given by plants growing and covering the earth. It's appropriate because we're going to have a meal made entirely of crops which grow in the desert around us.

GROUP [Song]

DANNY LOPEZ That's good.

ALAN ALDA (NARRATION) We're joined by Gary Nabhan, a botanist who specializes in the desert plants of the southwest.

ALAN ALDA These are beans?

DANNY LOPEZ Red tepary.

ALAN ALDA (NARRATION) Tepary beans were grown in the flood plains. They resist desert heat, and they're digested slowly - good for diabetics who need to avoid spikes in blood sugar. It turns out all the foods have some special quality.

DANNY LOPEZ It's spinach.

GARY NABHAN It's a wild spinach…

ALAN ALDA Wild spinach?

GARY NABHAN And it comes up in the summer, and it's really the best tasting spinach in the world.

ALAN ALDA (NARRATION) These are sliced prickly pear pads - we'll talk more about them in a minute. And here's the wild spinach - amaranth greens, with high protein seeds, and high calcium leaves.

ALAN ALDA What is this?

FRANCIS MANUEL Mesquite beans.

ALAN ALDA Oh, mesquite. OK, so just, like, one teaspoonful?

FRANCIS MANUEL Two.

ALAN ALDA Two. OK. One, two.

FRANCIS MANUEL That's enough.

ALAN ALDA (NARRATION) The mesquite drink is full of sugar, but it's a kind a sugar that you don't need insulin to digest.

FRANCIS MANUEL You know if you don't like it…

ALAN ALDA That's good. What do you mean, if I don't like it? That's good.

ALAN ALDA (NARRATION) Next -- cholla cactus buds. Francis gathered and dried these herself last Spring, six months ago. And, finally, my personal favorite - really powerful little wild chilies, gathered up in the mountains on the reservation. At last it was time to dig in.

ALAN ALDA This is a fantastic meal. What are the ways in which this food reconnects you to the culture?

DANNY LOPEZ Well I just thought about this to tell kids. You know, when you try to get kids to eat, things like the spinach or the cholla buds. They used to say like if you don't eat it, he -- like that's the creator that they believed in, years ago -- will cause a flood, you know. So you better eat your spinach or your cholla buds.

ALAN ALDA Or there will be a flood.

DANNY LOPEZ We'll all drown, like maybe right now.

ALAN ALDA (NARRATION) Because these foods are adapted to the desert, they all share one attribute - the ability to retain scarce water. How they do it was demonstrated by Gary Nabhan with a bowl of chia seeds, from a type of desert mint. Over the course of a few minutes the dry seeds swell up, absorbing about 15 times their volume of water. It's how they'd react to a sudden rainstorm in the desert. Desert plants have to be able to absorb water, and then hold on to it for as long as possible. They do it with a kind of natural glue.

GARY NABHAN It's all called soluble fiber. But, ah, prickly pear cacti and their relatives, the cholla cactus, are among the richest sources of that. And so when we look at a prickly pear pad like this -- and I'm going to get the spines in my fingers but I don't mind that because I'm a botanist -- when you look at this stuff, all this stuff is extra cellular mucilage. There's a goo in between the cells here that holds water in the pad, so that even during times of drought that water is only slowly lost from the plant. That's why a prickly pear can survive years without rain.

ALAN ALDA In the cactus, that goo gets in between the cells. What does it do when it goes into my body. It doesn't go in between my cells, does it?

GARY NABHAN Well, that's a great thing. When we put it in our stomachs, it keeps any sugars or carbohydrates from being rapidly released into our bloodstream. So that instead of our blood sugar level spiking, peaking very rapidly and then our pancreas trying to make insulin to keep up with that...

ALAN ALDA So you don't get a jolt of it.

GARY NABHAN No jolts.

ALAN ALDA You get it more on a …It's doled out more evenly.

GARY NABHAN Go ahead.

ALAN ALDA (NARRATION) This slow release is the secret to the desert foods because it provides natural protection against diabetes. So as the desert people were yo-yoing up and down in weight, tracking the feast or famine of their crops, their metabolisms were always maintained on an even keel by these perfect foods. I was learning some interesting stuff on this visit. Then I really got excited when it looked like Francis was ready to reveal to me an ancient, precious piece of tribal wisdom.

FRANCIS MANUEL Why were the Indians here first?

ALAN ALDA The question is, Why did the Indians live here first? Well, they lived here first because…

FRANCIS MANUEL Because…

ALAN ALDA Because, ah, they didn't live anyplace else yet. No, I haven't finished yet. I think I'm stuck. I think…I'd actually most like to hear your answer.

FRANCIS MANUEL My answer is easy. Because they have a reservation.

ALAN ALDA That's terrible!