Landraces

A landrace is a variety of plant (or animal) that has adapted over time to a particular environment. A landrace is a genetically diverse, balanced population who's members all appear similar in the characteristic for which they are cultivated (i.e. yield, size, flavour). A landrace population will have a high tolerance to normal stresses (fluctuating temperatures and moisture levels, and levels of insect predation and diseases) found in the environment in which it has developed due both to it's individual's suitability and it's genetic diversity as a population.

A landrace is an example of Darwinian evolution aided and abetted by humans though selection - an often unintended but desirable result of saving the best seed from each year's crop to plant in the next year. Landraces have evolved and been used by humans since shortly after we began sustained agriculture.

More recent efforts in plant breeding have threatened landraces due to the widespread use of hybrids, GMOs and clones that have been used as replacements for traditional local seed saving practices.

• Hybrids (which form the basis for most of the seed offerings in the larger seed catalogues today) do not come true to type from seed and therefore cannot be saved from year to year.
• GMOs (genetically modified plants) have been modified not through selection and their suitability to environmental pressures but by adding or removing or altering genes artificially. The results of which may or may not be adaptive, useful or even safe.
• Clones, plants produced by division and genetically identical, while not necessarily a problem themselves, contribute to the reduction in genetic diversity due to the fact that they are produced in the millions through cell culture.

The mass, widespread adoption of a few varieties of supposedly superior seed (produced in the manners above) has resulted in a drastic and dangerous reduction in the natural genetic diversity of our food crops all over the world.

By participating in the practice of saving seed, growing heritage varieties (landraces), and asking for them when you buy seed, you can help preserve the genetic diversity in our food supply. It will be this genetic diversity that may form the basis for recovery from, or survival of global disasters like that threatened by climate change. In addition landraces provide the raw material needed in plant breeding programs, which can - through careful and thoughtful human endeavour - produce better plants in the future.

At Flowers in the Front Yard we do our part by, saving our own seed, using heritage plants, and supporting the production and use of local landraces whenever possible.

Written by Candace Carter, for Flowers in the Front Yard, Jan 2010, all rights reserved.