Vegetable conservation

Vegetable conservation

Conference review/Viewpoinf are not being communicated to the producers. There is a need for better labelling of processed foods (which other countri...

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Conference review/Viewpoinf

are not being communicated to the producers. There is a need for better labelling of processed foods (which other countries already have) to give nutritional composition, and farmers need to be better informed on issues of food and nutrition. There may be a shift away from animal products, and large retailers are recognizing the increasing health food market. For farmers and growers there is scope to produce more fruit, vegetables and whole grains. What is rather astonishing and wel-

come about RURAL is that it brings together many diverse people: such as farmers, conservationists, landowners, academics, economists, research workers and organic growers, and their common concern for the land is genuine. It seems that the economics of over-production may finally lead to a less intensive, less environmentally damaging agriculture and to a saner use of the land before it is far too late. Tilo Ulbricht London, UK

Viewpoint Vegetable conservation The conservation of vegetables is a neglected topic. Owing to the unreasonable pressures put on tropical forests, botanical inventories are incomplete. In the UK, however, the use of heritage sites for the conservation of vegetables is rare. The creative endeavour of establishing a vegetable sanctuary can engage the unemployed and others with more developed skills. Environmental reclamation and the better use of botanic and soil resources are questions which do not sufficient/y figure in planning.

The Henry Doubleday Research Association already has five vegetable sanctuaries in the UK and one in Sri Lanka, as well as the prospect of others in Europe. Their aim is to preserve the heritage of vegetable varieties from the past for the plant breeders of the future. This heritage is relatively small compared with the horticultural riches of the unexploited local varieties of the Third World. Rather than hybrids inbred to pure lines as in the west, these are strains composed of a balance of variations selected through the centuries to yield a crop despite pests, diseases and adverse conditions. and each is a gene pool in itself. In the UK. vegetable sanctuaries are best sited in the walled kitchen gardens of great country houses open to the public and maintained for their architectural, historic and landscape value. Their task is to maintain stocks of vegetables of genetic and historic

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interest for the interest of the visitors and for study by students and plant breeders to observe how well the varieties of the past endure rising pollution, changing climate and new pests and diseases. In Third World countries, vegetable sanctuaries would be far better as a feature of botanic gardens, because of the range of the work that is needed before the world’s most neglected asset - its vegetables or ‘kitchen things’ as they are called in Indonesia _ can be explored and developed for the benefit of humanity. A sanctuary designed to preserve the gene pool of the plants. trees, birds, animals and all the wide range of living species in a tropical rainforest must occupy a considerable area and needs skilled management as well as policing to prevent poaching and other intrusions. It is not easy to maintain an untouched environment except in relatively large areas. Vegetables.

however, have lived in a mancontrolled environment no larger than an English garden or a Javanese rice terrace, very often, for as long as 3000 years. It is therefore possible to preserve a large number of varieties in a comparatively small space.

Labour costs The major cost is labour, at gardener and foreman level, with supervision by existing staff, though the better the scientific backing a sanctuary has, the greater its value to the community in the immediate future. A wildlife sanctuary preserves the inherited qualities of the species involved for long-term scientific interest. A vegetable sanctuary offers an opportunity for the study and assessment of the horticultural and nutritional value of the variations of the cultivars that have survived from the gardens of the past. In the UK and Europe these are known and catalogued. In the Third World, they are unexplored country. A botanic garden in any country contains collections in beds devoted to the separate natural orders. A vegetable sanctuary provides a traditional environment for the vegetables grown in an area, in many cases devised from the memories of elderly gardeners for varieties no longer grown. Some vegetables are or were grown in rotation with rice, or with irrigation, and these conditions would need to be supplied, just as Edinburgh Botanic Garden has a famous rock garden for the mountain plants of many countries. The beds for individual varieties or races of vegetable would need to be relatively large, (say 10 square metres) to allow enough individual seedlings to be grown for a decision to be made on whether a given vegetable was a true species like many of the salad and leaf vegetables normally gathered wild in the jungle near a village - or a collection of variations. Because the majority of the vegetables would be annual or biennial. beds would not be permanent. but expanded to take the selected variations from a mixture or contracted where an unvarying species was identified and merely maintained. Arrange-

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ment would not be under natural orders, because seed collection would be an important task, and chance hybridization must be avoided. The chromosome numbers of most tropical vegetables are unknown, and it is important to discover which cross pollinate as freely as the 18 chromosome brassica or the 30 chromosome dianthus. A botanic garden would have no difficulty in identifying species, with collections of local flora and standard reference works but, like Kew in the UK, they have regarded hybrids as outside their scope. Historic hybrids are, however, in a separate category, for unlike modern commercial hybrids, their number is limited, and diminishing fast. Their preservation is a matter of urgency in view of the immediate and direct benefits they may offer to their countries of origin. Where any race lives on a relatively restricted diet for centuries, they find ways to balance this, or they fail to survive. The fish, coconut and taro based diet of South Sea Islanders is an example. In many cases this balancing of missing vitamins and minerals is provided by sprouted grains, fermented sauces or even alcoholic drinks. More often it is provided by a vegetable or a wild herb that happens to be rich in the otherwise missing factor.

Search for guidance Local traditions of such plants can be gathered, and there may be equivalents to Paradisus Terrastris written by John Parkinson in 1640 which gives the first detailed accounts of British vegetables. This could give valuable guidance. The carrot is the best source of vitamin A (as beta carotene which is converted in our livers) known to the west, but in tropical climates the seed is not easily harvested. There may well be better sources, as yet undiscovered in tropical and subtropical vegetables, for more difficult conditions. Screening the unknown vegetables and their variations for vitamin building power under varied conditions would be an important part of the work of a sanctuary and because their

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level falls with the length of time after harvesting or cooking, notably in vitamin C, it would be especially valuable if this could be done in a department of the botanic garden, or in cooperation with a nearby research station.

Mineral gathering Vegetables, especially those that are deep rooting, can have remarkable mineral gathering ability. Spinach (Spinncia oleracea) is a classic example with up to 595 mg pr 100 grams of calcium and 4.0 mg per 100 grams of iron (fresh weight cooked). However, this value is cancelled out by the very high oxalic acid it contains which locks up both minerals as oxalates that pass from the body with additional iron and calcium from other foods, leaving a loss of nutritionally valuable minerals. Analysis for vitamins, minerals and oxalates would be part of the task of the sanctuaries, and this could well include the tannins. which prevent the digestion of certain carbohydrates, and hold back the carob (Cerutonia siliqm) from providing twice the food value per acre of a good crop of British barley, from dry hillsides where little else can grow. It would be highly desirable for sanctuaries to be founded at several botanic gardens, not only to cover the main climatic zones, but to check the difference that different soils and other conditions can make to the analysis, and to the flavour of the vegetables. In the UK a trial was undertaken of the vitamin C in about 100 varieties of apple, growing on three sites. These were The National Fruit Trials Collection, at Faversham, in Kent, The Royal Horticultural Society’s Gardens at Wisley in Surrey, and Long Ashton Research Station in Somerset. Often the vitamin C varies more widely between the same variety grown on different sites than between the varieties. In Sri Lanka there are 25 common varieties of Mango. The Founder of the vegetable sanctuary there has eaten the same varieties of mango grown in different districts and the taste is unrecognizably different. Therefore, it is important to check the analysis several times in the season, and in several areas, to find which

are consistently high in a vitamin, like carrots, and to check the soil type and mineral analysis in relation to that of the crop. Vegetable breeding is not part of the work of a vegetable sanctuary, which is to preserve and study in detail the pure or mixed races of cultivated plants grown and eaten raw or cooked by the people of the country where they are sited. The knowledge that they win, the programmes of breeding that this suggests and the germplasm material they can supply, will be of different value to government or commercial plant breeders. At present it is possible to buy a range of vegetables in the markets in most Third World countries, but these are grown by individuals. Nowhere is there anything like the market gardens of Europe or the truck gardens of the USA where seeds bought by the ton are raised by the hundred hectares. The more countries developing towards this kind of mass monoculture, the quicker will the vegetable riches of the Third World suffer the fate of the Amazon forests.

Forgotten

heritage

In the UK seeds may survive in half used packets forgotten in potting sheds, but where seed packets are unknown, this is not possible. The first and most imuortant steu is a ‘Search and rescue operation’ around the area of every botanic garden, involving house to house and village to village searches. There may even be survivals around ruins and temples. In Sri Lanka, with three climatic zones and 22 provinces, the same name is used for roughly the same vegetable all over the island, although it varies widely. There are local seed suppliers, who issue only a list of the local names and prices. It is, therefore, likely that botanic gardens will find themselves with large numbers of varieties, even species with the same local name. These may be mixtures with different proportions of the basic variations and the best system might be to call them after the district where they originated, but to number the variations once these were sorted. It is essential that the botanic gardens

should be in close contact with each other, for the same vegetable variety may well be identified and described by two or three botanists. The object of the exercise is to conserve the vegetables of the past, not to propagate names and botanical controversy. There are a number of vegetables, mainly grown as salads or spinach which are vegetatively propagated. In Thailand there is ‘Pak Boon’ which is C’onvolvulu.~ aquatica, grown by riverside dwellers who buy wild shoots in the local markets, pack these into a basket and trail it in the river, pulling in the string and clipping off the crop at intervals. The plant feeds entirely through white roots that spring from the stems, taking its food supply from the river. In Bali there are several

rhizomes which are grown in dishes of soil and their foliage cut off repeatedly as salads, and there are several rapidly growing perennial plants in the Philippines which will provide green vegetables and salads for a family from a space perhaps one metre wide and three long. These could well be induced to set seed and release further possibilities of breeding vegetables to produce the most flavour, vitamins and minerals to balance a basically rice. millet or maize diet from the minimum space in the inevitably even of the cities more crowded future. Lawrence D. Hills Director, Henry Doubleday Research Association Bocking, UK

Viewpoint Integrated rural development helping people help themselves Sanjit Roy argues that the quest for social justice and the equal distribution of wealth is implicit in any integrated rural development (IRD) project. He c/aims that up until now, these issues have been rarely linked in India, which has lead to failure. In setting up any IRD programme, the questions of which people and what form of participation is necessary, must be addressed with care. The author argues that those who live below the poverty line should be the main target of such schemes, and these communities must be reached without intermediaries. There is a desperate need in India for face-to-face encounters between the professional and the beneficiary: between geologist and farmer, nurse and pregnant woman, teacher and truant. Such an approach is more likely to bring about a degree of participation beyond that reached so far. Sanjit Roy explains how basically it is a matter of trust; the poor must be trusted to think positively about their own development and the social barriers which have prevented this must be broken down. Before analysing the meaning of justiit is important to fied ‘integration’. understand what is meant by participation. Far too many people with little practical knowledge of either, have expressed their opinions and confused the issue even further. Socalled experts can, at the slightest hint. pontificate on what people’s participation should, could. or must be, but when they see it happening in front of them they are not prepared to accept it. Preconceived notions exist

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which are often alien to the Indian situation because they have been picked up in an entirely different context in the USA or the UK. It is time these issues were observed in the proper perspective. It is already an accepted fact that the Planning Commission of India. the highest planning body in the country, has often expressed views on people’s participation which differ irreconcilably with the way the village government functionary sees the problem.

There is a massive gap between the planner and the implementer: those who plan have little idea of rural realities and those who implement can barely read the Plan document. This is understandable. The planner comes from a Havard or Cambridge background. The implementers, district level officials or Block Development Officers (BDOs) are junior civil servants not known for their skill in economics, statistics or verbal gymnastics. Their knowledge of the English language is limited, their ability to interpret or improvise is poor, but their experience in dealing with people and surviving in the cut-throat world is infinite. Their sympathy to the problems of the rural poor is suspect. In fact they do whatever they like, giving whatever interpretation they think best to new schemes drawn for the benefit of the rural families and scheduled castes living below the poverty line. There is no one to question whcthcr their version is correct or not. The Sixth Plan document formulated by the Planning Commission on people’s participation is of a perfect blue-print for non-violent revolution. All the relevant sentiments are expressed - the need to mobilize and organize the poor, the need for rural communities to be self-reliant and not to depend on government, the need for people to fight for their rights. the need for people to be made aware of special schemes and opportunities available to them, the need to train the poor and to give them the necessary knowledge, tools and skills to stand on their own two feet. But India has always been found wanting in the translating of these ideas into practice and in giving them tangible shape. For instance in the Preamble of the Sixth Plan there is a section on the importance the government attaches to social justice and the equal distribution of wealth and how it is committed to removing unemployment and improving the condition of over 300 million people living below the poverty line in India. But such an expression of intent means little unless accompanied by realistic strategies. Against this background it is necessary to ask ourselves some crucial

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