By: Charlene Rennick
Heirloom plants are named as such because they can literally be passed down from one family member to the next generation in the form of seeds. The seeds are saved at harvest time, allowed to dry over the winter and re-sown in the spring earth. Heirloom seeds are unique because they are not the result of commercial engineering or cloning; they are created by a natural process of random pollination.
Heirloom Plants are the Result of Open Pollination
Heirloom plants come from nature. They are pollinated by bees, butterflies, wind and birds. The plants are allowed to cross-germinate and evolve without human or mechanical interference. This is described as “open pollination”. (wikipedia) When pollination is not controlled, the genetic diversity found in the plants becomes more extensive. Vegetation is randomly pollinated which produces fruit and vegetables in response to the changing environment, plant life and living populations. Open pollination gives us a wider range of flavours, sizes, growth rates, harvest times and species. This natural process cannot be duplicated by mathematical equations. The drawback of this for commercial growers is that some species will be desirable for human consumption, while others may not. Once a preferable species is found, it is hard to control its production and avoid the diversity that made it in the first place. This is why open pollination is undesirable for commercial growers whose bottom line is maximizing profit and mass producing.
Open Pollination versus Commercial Production
Commercially-grown produce are called hybrids. They are pollinated by machine or by hand in a climate-controlled environment. Commercially-grown fruit and vegetables are genetically engineered to have similar traits. These traits are manipulated to make the produce last longer during transport, stay free of diseases, be identical in flavour, texture and size, and ripen at the same time.
Genetic control has pros and cons. The produce can be picked, packaged and sold within a certain window of freshness. The manufacturer can mass produce and rely on the produce to be visually uniform when it arrives at the supermarket. The disadvantages are that flavour is low on the list of transport-friendly characteristics. The gene pool doesn’t benefit from random nature-inspired improvements and combinations. Genuine evolution is the result of the natural interaction between many environmental processes which ensure the survival of the species as times change.