Variety Is the Spice of Life

October 23rd, 2009 at 02:07pm Andrea (Andy) Hazzard

When I started vegetable gardening, I ordered the big catalog from Seed Savers Exchange in Decorah, Iowa. Their mission is to preserve heirloom garden seeds. This means that the green tomatoes that someone grew long ago in the hills of Western Kentucky, or even in more distant corners of the world, are available to us today.

Thousands of varieties and thousands of years of combined selection bring us to the present. There are several seed banks around the world that store seeds. They are effectively storing a map of the evolution of food. Every living thing contains genetic code, and with food in particular, human and natural selection have shaped that code over hundreds and even thousands of years. For plants, adaptability is an insurance policy to guarantee that there will be a next generation of their species.

Consider modern tomatoes and field corn. According to the 1937 Yearbook of Agriculture published by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, “Of about 40 varieties that had attained a distinct status prior to 1910, a third were productions or introductions by the Livingston Seed Company. If we add those varieties derived directly from Livingston productions and introductions, it appears that half of the major varieties were due to the abilities of the Livingstons to evaluate and perpetuate superior material in the tomato.” That’s not very much genetic diversity, especially considering that there are thousands of varieties of tomatoes that were derived from the work done by the Aztecs since 500 BC.

Attempts to preserve all those varieties means that there is much more genetic material to work with. Most people dislike the taste of winter tomatoes from the store, and part of that comes from forcing them to grow out of season. Other factors include breeders selecting for ship-ability, uniform size and color, appearance (no cracking), disease resistance, plant size, days to maturity, and even cold tolerance. Unfortunately, lost in all this is taste.

Having heirloom ancestors allows us to manipulate the genetic code even more, so that perhaps someday there will be a tomato with all the desired traits and good taste. Modern corn varieties have been bred to respond to petroleum-based fertilizers, namely nitrogen, as it was cheap and plentiful after World War II. As efforts continue to wean ourselves off of the dwindling supply of oil, we will undoubtedly reach back into history and use some of the ancient varieties to breed new characteristics into our modern varieties.

I urge you to support heirloom growers and heirloom seed companies. Don’t judge food by its color; judge it by its uniqueness, its smell and how it and tastes. Is it really necessary for every tomato to be nearly the same size, shape, and color? Variety is the spice of life!

Andy Hazzard
Hazzard Free Farm
First Hand Harvest CSA
Local Food Systems Coordinator
University of Illinois Extension

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