Beetroot

There are many vibrant cultivars of beetroots, each with distinct flavours. Some sweeter, some saltier and some that smack you in the face with that distinctive beetroot earthiness.

Wild Sea Beets growing near the Aegean Sea

Incredibly the modern beet comes from ‘sea beets’ which do not produce a tap root but are more of a wild chard. The sea beet was cultivated prehistorically somewhere in the Middle East for its leaves as food. Sea beets normally flower 2–3 months after germinating, therefore it’s suggested that initial selections were likely made to take it from an annual to a biennial growth habit, extending it’s harvest window and for the quality of their leaves, the only part of the plant allegedly utilised at that time. Sweet swollen root types were probably selected from these beets, which led first to root beets for human consumption and later to selection for large beets used as animal fodder. However it’s also likely that beets and their passage through cultivation probably occurred concurrently to the selection and cultivation of beets as a wild food.

There has been findings of wild beets within commercial beet fields in France which are genetic intermediaries between sugar beets and another inland wild beet. Beets are prolific pollen producers and as they are wind pollinated, producing seed is a huge challenge. Gene transfer readily occurs and this is only compounded in the northern hemisphere with it’s wide distribution of wild beet populations.

This week we’re also introducing Chioggia beetroots in the box. These beets are all the way from Chioggia, Italy, where they’ve been selected and bred since at least the mid 1800’s. They’re a sweet beetroot that have less of the typical earthy flavour we expect from purple beetroots. These beetroots have large leaves that we can cook and enjoy like chard. They’re a direct relative of chard ~ salty and chewy.

8 June 2022
We are excited to have badger flame beets for you this week. It’s taken us quite a few go’s at growing beets to get them right in our context but we have been planting them consistently now and they are looking consistently great!

The badger flame was first released in 2018 and is a very special beet because it has been specifically bred for flavour by the plant breeder Irwin Goldman.

Irwin Goldman with the plants.

Goldman describes how, as a young beet breeder, he used to bring his children to his field trials. When he cut off pieces of raw beets for them to taste, they told him, “This is like licking a playground. It’s like eating mud!” And of course, there’s an element of truth to that. Beets do have a distinctive, earthy aroma, which is caused by a compound called geosmin, produced primarily by bacteria in the soil. For years, scientists have known that this compound was also present in beets, but no one knew why. Goldman set off to discover the answer, growing different beet varieties under very controlled conditions. Over the years he proved that the roots themselves were making geosmin, and that geosmin levels are specific to certain cultivars.

This webinar is a presentation of Solveig Hanson’s phD and goes into amazing detail on beet flavour profiling and participatory beet breeding work. Including the story of the development of the badger flame and two exciting new varieties bred for flavour!