Plants & People

Many people are familiar with heirloom varieties of tomatoes and other fruits and vegetables. Heirlooms can be a source of genetic diversity for crops, as they are different cultivated varieties of the crop genus. Landraces are a similar concept, but are associated with a place or a traditional cultural group.

The genetic diversity of heirlooms and landraces is “within-crop” diversity — within the crop species itself — whereas crop wild relatives are the other species closely related to the crop species.

Here are a few links in case you want to learn more:
https://foodprint.org/blog/heirloom-seeds/

These are landraces of the potato brought by farmers to a meeting in Paucartambo, Peru. The potato was domesticated in the Andes, and there are thousands of these cultivars used for different purposes. The names of the landraces are written on paper, some in Spanish and some in Quechua.
This Quechua woman is displaying the landraces that have been in her family for generations. The bilingual technician is collecting data on how many landraces are still maintained by small farmers such as this woman.

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