Can new, sweeter beets defeat stigmas? Wisconsin breeders hope so

Pushed by new breeds aimed toward bettering taste and high quality, a “beet renaissance” is underway and shifting longtime shopper habits with the earthy, root vegetable.

Or, at the very least, that’s the hope of beet breeders on the College of Wisconsin-Madison and Wisconsin’s trade of beet farmers, who collectively produce greater than half the nation’s annual desk beet crop.

“It’s not your grandmother’s pickled beets,” mentioned Adam D’Angelo, a UW-Madison graduate pupil and plant biologist. “You go to the grocery retailer, and you discover beet juice, beet chips, beet this and beet that.”

D’Angelo and UW-Madison horticulture professor Irwin Goldman not too long ago appeared on Wisconsin Public Radio’s “The Larry Meiller Present” to debate their work redesigning beets for contemporary tastes. Goldman mentioned individuals typically complain “about the truth that they style like dust.”

“You take a look at it, and also you consider the huddled plenty of our ancestors and their old-style meals,” Goldman mentioned. “However there’s one thing about its earthiness, about its shade and its magnificence that I discover has grown on me over time I’ve labored on it.”

The “dust” odor and taste is partially from geosmin, a naturally occurring micro organism byproduct present in soil. After a few years of analysis, Goldman mentioned he found beets themselves additionally create the chemical by means of their genetics.

“Why? We do not know,” mentioned Goldman, who has studied and bred beets for 3 a long time.

UW-Madison touts being the nation’s solely publicly funded desk beet breeder. One in all its creations, “Badger Flame,” is designed to be extra yellow than different beet varieties, and it carries a sweeter, much less earthy taste. Goldman contributed to its growth.

“We selected the rectangular form as a result of we like the way in which it really works within the kitchen whenever you’re holding the beet or whenever you’re peeling it and dealing with it,” he mentioned. “And by dialing again the purple and rising the yellow, we’re nearly like portray with the vegetable, with the ability to make one thing that has a yellow and purple swirl in it.”

With the beet being a specialty crop, Goldman mentioned it may be a problem for dwelling gardeners to order seeds.

He hopes it positive aspects reputation after which turns into extra extensively obtainable.