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Image Number K7228-49 |
Nearly every head of iceberg lettuce you'll find in a supermarket owes its
parentage to the work of ARS plant breeders. Salinas iceberg lettuce and its
progeny are the most widely planted iceberg lettuces in the Salinas Valley of
California, the world's foremost lettuce-growing region. Farmers in other parts
of the United States and foreign countries from Sweden to Australia also raise
these lettuces.
It's amazing what lettuce breeders can accomplish! Can't eat an entire head
of lettuce by yourself? Never fear-an inventive ARS plant breeder devised an
iceberg mini-lettuce that makes just enough salad for one person to eat at one
sitting.
How do they do it? Lettuce breeders rely on the ARS gene bank, which houses
seeds of more than 2,000 lettuce types. The genes that are banked there today
should result in lots more lettuce-magic soon. Look for traits like the warm
gold of a Hungarian lettuce or the intense crimson of a Spanish variety to be
introduced into the familiar lettuces that are grown in the United States today.
Photo by Scott Bauer.
640 pixels wide: (k7228-49.jpg)
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Last Modified: 05/23/2006
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