Inventors in the Netherlands have developed a new long-necked variety of broccoli. With a stalk that lifts the broccoli head above the "plant canopy," the heads can be more easily harvested by mechanical means.
Rather unusually for a patent, this one (8,030,549) begins with a discourse on the history of broccoli, including the origin of its name.
Broccoli is a member of the Cruciferae family, as are cabbage, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, kohlrabi, turnips, mustards, and Chinese cabbage. The word broccoli comes from the Italian word "brocco", which means arm branch, more particularly, from the word broccolo, which is the diminutive form of brocco and refers to cabbage sprout. Broccoli is plural and refers to the numerous shoots in this form of Brassica oleracea.
The disadvantage of ordinary brocoli is that it must be harvested manually because the edible head "sits deep in the crop" among the leaves. As a result, more than half of the labor costs of growing broccoli are concentrated at the harvest. The new strain promises to reduce these costs by raising the broccoli heads above the leafy canopy.
The exerted broccoli type brings the head far above the canopy. The broccoli further has no large leaves in the area of the stalk that is immediately below the head, and so it can be harvested at the level of the stem in a manner that is free of interference of the leaves, including petioles, which not only eases manual harvest but makes possible the efficient once-over mechanical harvesting of the crop, in both cases saving labor costs.
The heads of ordinary broccoli (left) are nestled deep within the plant canopy, while the heads of the patented broccoli (right), extend above the leaves, where they can more easily be harvested.
The new broccoli was gradually developed by an ongoing project of crossing and selection that began in the 1980s. Broccoli with raised ("exserted") heads had been bred before, but it tended to be of poor quality.
Only after a succession of years of crossing and selection in combination with one or two generations of selfing was it shown that the genetic linkage that existed between head exsertion and poor horticultural and head quality characteristics could be broken. The progress in any generation was always small and difficult to quantify from generation to generation.
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