Until quite recently, farmers and gardeners were the guardians of our plant heritage and a sustainable future for every cultivated edible and decorative species grown.

It was the knowledge of seed-saving that allowed humans to establish settlements from which villages, towns and the cities of today have evolved. With the passage of time, farmers learnt which particular plants should seeds be saved from, how and when to harvest seeds and what are the most reliable methods of seed storage. Since humans cannot survive without a reliable and sustainable food source, it makes saving seeds for future crops absolutely essential.

Not so long ago, it was not uncommon for an area to be famous for the unparalleled sweetness of its melons, high productivity of its beans, long storage life of its pumpkins or its pest-resistant aubergines.

Thanks to the diligent efforts of growers for centuries, the best seeds were handed down from one generation to the next without any reduction in quality. Referred to as ‘heirloom or heritage varieties’, these wonderfully productive, soil- and climate-suitable fruits and vegetables are a treasure that is now increasingly difficult to find.

The sole reason for their rapid demise is commercial farming and a focus on selling what would cost less to grow but would bring in more returns.

Saving and growing heirloom seeds is not only important for preserving plant varieties best adapted to local growing conditions, but also for the battle against standardised, hybrid seeds marketed by multinationals purely for profit purposes

Seed production from localised varieties of edible plants was a simple matter. A grower would identify the strongest, healthiest and most productive plants of the chosen species to harvest seeds from. Humans or farm animals consumed weaker or pest/disease-infested ones. With ‘open-pollinated’ plants that are easily pollinated through wind or by bees and other beneficial insects that fly or crawl from one flower to the next, all the grower had to do for sowing future crops was to adhere to certain planting distances to reduce or prevent cross-pollination of varieties and viable seeds and let nature take its course.

For instance, generations of melon growers in Malir, perfected melon plants that were totally adapted to local growing conditions and had an inbuilt resistance to local pests and diseases as a bonus. These melon seeds planted elsewhere in the country were not resistant to problems in the new growing area and required generations of persistence for them to develop such traits.

As well as being predominantly localised, heritage varieties have other traits which can be beneficial or not, depending on your preference. Heritage melons for instance, have no uniformity of size or even of shape, the skin may be extra thick, delicately thin or bumpy and, instead of ripening all at once, the crop is liable to ripen over a protracted period of time. But all of this would be frowned upon by profit-driven dealers of the present day. What cannot be questioned, however, is that the taste of these possibly ‘ugly’ melons is far superior to that of any commercially grown, meticulously standardised, hybrid melon variety in the market these days.

To meet the unnatural demand for good-looking, long-keeping, fruit and vegetables that travel well, multinational seed companies have taken over global seed markets, flooding them with hybrid seeds for produce that may look wonderful but has little, if any, taste. These hybrid seeds will produce increasingly inferior crops and, eventually, no crops at all.

Skillfully replacing heritage seeds with hybrid ones, seed companies are rapidly ensuring that growers will have no option but to purchase — not harvest — new seed stock each and every year. In doing so, as their profits soar, our precious, sustainable heritage and biodiversity is being irretrievably lost. And I haven’t even touched upon the nasty subject of genetically modified organisms!

Many of our indigenous varieties of edible crops have already vanished under this relentless multinational onslaught, but not all of it, you will be relieved to know. It is imperative that we take prompt action to conserve them if we are to save the remaining ones from extinction.

Search out the gardening/farming elders in your area, get to know them and ask about any heritage varieties they may still grow, such as the famous purple carrots of Mardan, the huge, brown-veined cucumbers of Alai east of Bisham (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) or the honeyed watermelons of Multan. Request a few seeds for yourself or to send them to someone you know, who has the land and the interest to grow them. Spread more generations of heritage seeds around and preserve them for posterity. The battle is well and truly on!

Please continue sending your gardening queries to zahrahnasir@hotmail.com. Remember to include your location. The writer does not respond directly by email. Emails with attachments will not be opened

Published in Dawn, EOS, June 20th, 2021