The Accidental Seed Heroes
On 25th February 2025 ODGC was delighted to welcome back Adam Alexander, globetrotting seed collector and author who works with the Heritage Seed Library to conserve rare vegetables. Adam has been saving seed for over 35 years and has an enormous collection from various sources.
What is the future of plant breeding? Adam feels that it is not about giant seed companies breeding homogeneous plants but about small companies and individuals producing open pollinated crops adapted to their environment. Our forebears have been doing this by observation since Neolithic times and most plant breeders until 200 years ago were farmers breeding ‘farmers varieties’. Increasingly volatile weather means that it is important to breed for resilience as well as flavour.
Most people in the world are fed from farms of 4 hectares or less therefore community seedbanks are vital. The Southern Rift Valley of Ethiopia, a land of 5 rivers and many lakes, has one of the oldest systems of agriculture. Farmers till the soil to break up the surface, the no dig method, and mulch with manure. The principal crop is Ensete, a perennial superfood grown as a source of carbohydrate and rich in minerals and vitamins. It is grown amongst a mixture of crops including coffee and tomatoes and harvested every 6/7 years. Every so often it is allowed to flower and set seed to refresh the gene pool. Besides feeding 40 million people it is storable and used as animal feed and rope.
Albania, the last of the communist bloc, has a Mediterranean climate in the west and a Continental climate in the east, the two separated by a mountain ridge. Most of its energy is derived from water. The need for food self sufficiency was recognised during communist times and huge collective farms were formed. The brightest students were made to study agronomy. After the fall of communism the farms were broken up into tiny holdings of approximately 2 acres growing a huge diversity of crops adapted to the local area.
Crop diversity leads to resilience and growing populations of plants means that they ripen at different times and harvests are not totally at the mercy of variable weather. Gardeners can play their part by the careful selection of seed from individual plants which have done well giving rise to generations of plants adapted to their locale. Hopefully our Neolithic ancestors will be proud of us!
Ghislaine Arundale
