Whanganui's Heritage Food Crops Research Trust and the importance of seed collection

NZ Herald

16-05-2025

Seed saving is a laborious and, at the same time, satisfying job, with tomatoes being one of the most time-consuming.
These seeds have to be removed from the fruit, put in a jar with water to ferment for three days, then thoroughly dried on baking paper, placed into a jar, labelled and then put into a seed fridge ready for storage and later overbred.
The trust said it recognised the importance of having lycopene in our diet as it is a powerful antioxidant, and research has shown it can help prevent heart disease as well as certain cancers.
While the trust originally started growing heritage tomatoes of all colours, shapes and sizes, research has shown that certain orange tomatoes have the easily absorbed form of lycopene, even when eaten raw.
Because the tomato is the most overbred food, every year, the trust selects plants it considers have evolved towards their original form.
Trying to undo 450 years of breeding for appearance and commercial criteria is not a fast process.
Beans
After first finding all the varieties it could grow in New Zealand, the trust imported 31 varieties of beans from the United States, with many grown and saved for generations, some over 1000 years.
The trust's research has shown that the very best varieties for health are invariably the oldest, those that have retained the integrity of their original genetic blueprint.
Bean seeds that can reproduce themselves for a thousand years and hold the right combination of compounds to sustain human health.
For this reason, the trust takes great care to ensure that it maintains the pure varieties of beans.
Any suspected crosses are rooted out and go into the pot for a good bean stew enjoyed by the volunteers.
The bean seeds are available free to the community, which encourages people to grow this healthy food for themselves.
Wheat
The trust imported 10 heritage wheat varieties from an Australian gene bank in 2015.
It wanted to test whether gluten intolerance was brought about by a breeding error, in the race to create greater yields from wheat.
The trust thought that if it could go back far enough, it might be able to find a variety that contained gluten and yet could be eaten without any difficulty by people with modern wheat intolerances.
The trust is at present trialling a wheat called 'Turvey' and has had a small quantity milled.
A local artisan baker baked this into sourdough bread, which was tested on a group of people who were wheat intolerant.
None of the participants reacted after consuming a slice of this bread.
The trust said it hoped to produce a much larger quantity of wheat, to be available in 2026 for commercial growing and breadmaking.
Carrots
The latest research project is carrots, and the trust has gone back to find the original form of carrot for trialling; not orange but black, or dark purple, with a yellow core.
The trust said modern purple carrots had been bred in a way that has interfered with the original integrity of the underlying compounds.
Now the cores may be orange or purple, losing the vital synergy the heirloom varieties held.
The trust said it would continue trialling and hoped to have seeds available of the best carrots for health that it could find in the future.
Each year, the trust gives away more than 13,000 bags of seeds, plus once a year at the Whanganui Market its members give away tomato seedlings.
here.