Read the
magazine
story to find out more.
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ARS is collecting heirloom collard seeds for
preservation in the U.S. Plant Introduction Collection. Click the image for
more information about it.
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Preserving a Unique Collection of Carolina
Collards
By Ann Perry
April 10, 2008 Some people comb through neighborhood
yard sales and secondhand stores to find that one-of-a-kind treasure.
Agricultural Research Service (ARS) plant
geneticist
Mark
Farnham used similar tacticsbut on a much larger scalein his
search for distinctive varieties of Carolina collards.
Collard, a cole crop related to broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower, has
always been a local staple in the South. But its commercial cultivation
expanded dramatically in the 20th century, and is now dominated by a few hybrid
varieties.
Farnham, at the
U.S.
Vegetable Laboratory in Charleston, S.C., teamed up with
Clemson University entomologist Powell
Smith and Emory & Henry College
geographers John T. Morgan and Edward Davis to look for unique collard
varieties in the Carolina coastal plains.
The team of collectors wanted to find and preserve "heirloom"
collards, local varieties of the leafy vegetable that had been cultivated from
seeds passed down through generations. So for several years, they traveled
through North Carolina and South Carolina in the late winter looking for signs
of local collard production: dark green collard leaves or bright yellow
blossoms.
If Farnham and his colleagues found a field where heirloom collards were
being cultivated, they asked the owner if they could collect some of its seeds.
During their travels, most of the growers they metpeople who grew collard
in garden plots for their own use, or to sell at local marketswere at
least 70 years old.
The research team collected 87 distinctive collard seed samples from these
small gardensvarieties that might otherwise have disappeared in the near
future. Additional research is needed to see if these finds contain genetic
material that plant breeders could use to enhance popular commercial collard
hybrids and other cole crops.
The collard seeds are now kept in the U.S. Plant Introduction Collection of
vegetable Brassicas in Geneva, N.Y., where scientists maintain facilities for
the preservation of plant germplasm.
Read
more about this research in the April 2008 issue of Agricultural
Research magazine.
ARS is the U.S. Department of
Agriculture's chief scientific research agency.