Liberty Hyde Bailey's Cyclopedia of Horticulture (1914) talks about orange
carrots and notes that improved forms were introduced from Holland into
England during the reign of Elizabeth I. Gerard's Herbal (1633) talks of
garden carrots with yellow and red roots. He distinguishes between wild
and cultivated kinds. Gerard has a better opinion of the wild than
cultivated carrots. He notes for cultivated carrots that "The
nourishment which commeth thereof is not much ..."
Thus, your hypothesis that carrot color arose because of breeding for
vitamin content seems to be supported. An advantage of the orange root is
that it is highly visible when digging the crop for harvest.
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David R. Hershey
Snail mail: 6700 Belcrest Road #112, Hyattsville, MD 20782-1340
Adjunct Professor, Biology/Horticulture Dept.
Prince George's Community College, Largo, MD 20772-2199
Email: dh321 at pgstumail.pg.cc.md.us
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On 9 Apr 1997, Bill Purves wrote:
> The carrot question that my colleague Mary Williams's student proposed is an
> interesting one. Mary had mentioned it to me before she posted to plant-ed,
> so I'm following this with interest.
>> The 3/3 consensus of those who replied first is that selection by breeders
> is responsible for the high beta-carotene content of today's carrot roots,
> and one of the respondents suggests that the motivation has been to provide
> more vitamin A.
>> It was pointed out that wild _Daucus carota_ generally lacks substantial
> carotene accumulations. I'd like to know what farmers's carrots looked like
> around the turn of this century. Vitamin A is not something that's been
> recognized for all THAT many decades. I don't find it likely that we've been
> consciously selecting for colorful carrot roots on nutritional grounds.
> It's not as if carrots are a major constituent of that many diets (I think).
> I'd be more convinced if we were talking about a crop such as an orange rice
> or millet.
>> If those lovely carrots are the result of selection, I'd find it easier to
> believe that the selection was purely for esthetics/novelty. But we won't
> know unless somebody can document the motivation, which seems unlikely.
>> As I mentioned in an aside to Mary yesterday, in seeking an answer to the
> Kolorful Karrot Kwery, we might at the same time wonder about all the
> anthocyanins in the beet root. AND, as I said to Mary, I wonder whether the
> carotene has anything to do with the FLAVOR of the carrot. I'm not prepared
> to go taste-testing in the lab!
>> (bill)
>> William K. Purves phone: 909.626.4859
> 2817 N. Mountain Avenue voice mail: 909.621.8021
> Claremont, CA 91711-1550 fax: 909.626.7030
> USA e-mail: Bill_Purves at hmc.edu>http://www2.hmc.edu/bio/purves.html>http://www.monagroup.com> __________________________________________________
>>
