TUCSON, Ariz. — There’s an important heirloom of Southwest culture being passed around, and it can’t be found in an antique store or tourist shop.

This particular heirloom, while in a way can be purchased, requires nurture to stay alive, and lives on through culinary enjoyment.

In common conversation, the word "heirloom" brings to mind an object that has been passed down from generation to generation. And while the definition of an heirloom plant has slightly different denotations, it turns out that in many ways, heirloom foods themselves are just exactly what they sound.

Native Seed SEARCH is a local organization dedicated to making sure that endangered crops stay around for future generations.

In its most methodical approach, NSS preserves seeds in a seed bank, which stores seeds as a reserve in case they are destroyed in the wild. In this way, seed storing serves as a type of insurance against disastrous events to protect biodiversity.

But, just as one is often advised not to buy a new pair of shoes just to keep them in the back of the closet, NSS needed other ways to keep the crops and its seeds in circulation.

One way it does so is through the sponsorship of Chef Janos Wilder, who uses the native foods in his recipes at restaurant, Janos at Tucson's Westin La Paloma resort. To Wilder, while a seed bank is a necessary caution, it was a sensible thought that in fact brought him in the opposite direction.

“The way you really keep the seeds alive is not by keeping them stored away in the seed bank– that’s just insurance policy,” Wilder says. “The way to keep them alive is by growing and using them.”

While Wilder is mainly interested in unique flavor profiles of lesser-tasted foods, the native crops’ seeds contain more than just flavor. Wilder's use of the seeds exposes patrons to foods they might never taste otherwise. The exposure offers customers the opportunity to participate in the worldwide effort to save the flavors of the true Southwest while sharing in the culinary culture of the region.


About Native Seed SEARCH

As a conservation organization, NSS has the mission to preserve traditional crops of the Southwest. In particular, NSS aims to re-build the quantity of existing seeds from crops that were utilized by all of the early indigenous and non-indigenous cultures in this region.

Because NSS is an environmentally active organization that offers rare seeds, it is often an assumption that their crops are organic. Although its consistent approach has involved the use of organic products and organic practices, it is not certified organic and becoming such was not an original priority.

With growing consumer interest in product awareness, however, the conversation surrounding the differences and similarities between organic and local farming efforts has been ongoing.

NSS’ first priority is seed survival, and in this way, plant needs must come before certified organic regulations. While NSS is cognizant of chemical use, its overarching responsibility is to the endangered seed varieties and making sure they stay alive. Sometimes chemicals are necessary to keep bugs away and to help them survive.

As seed growers, whose interest stems from botany and biology more than consumption itself, Suzanne Nelson, who is responsible for the entire collection of seeds and conservation efforts as the director of conservation at NSS, noted that its work, which is focused on planting, not eating, has offered another misconception.

“You think farm, you think food production,” she said. “But we are seed producers and so people want to eat the corn and all the other crops we grow, and we’re crying, ‘no, no! You can’t eat this stuff! You’ve got to get the seed off it first, then you take it home and grow it, and then you eat it!”

It is “moments of hilarity” like this that lightened the heavier moments NSS initially experienced surrounding its potential crops.

During its first grow-out season in 1998, 2,000 different successions of seeds were planted, and the growers had concerns about the seeds still being viable and able to germinate.

Success followed. Now, with their efforts yielding success, the growers’ original worries and burdens of responsibility are diminished as they know they now have a safe supply of seeds in the bank. For this reason, Nelson said that now is a better time to move toward becoming certified organic.

Possessing about 2,000 different collections of traditional crops and their wild relatives, more than 500 assortments of corn, over 300 types of beans and around 300 different squash varieties are included in their reserve. While all current collections are based on food crops, NSS hopes to add more wild and domestic culinary herbs to its stock, the majority of which is collected from southern Sonora.

In traditional face-to-face business, the NSS seed library grows through one-on-one interactions with farmers.

“It’s a nice concept,” Nelson said.

“The seeds are collected from traditional farmers who want to disperse them so that future generations also can plant the crops their ancestors used to grow,” she said.

Farmers’ interest and participation translates into the actuality that all seeds maintained in the NSS seed bank stem from a long agricultural legacy of the Southwest and also make up the first part of the two-pronged approach to conservation by NSS.

In the ex situ, or off-site approach, seed collections are gathered from farmers in southern Sonora and then transported to the seed bank in Tucson where the seeds are kept frozen for safekeeping.

The second method of reintroducing native crops into the wild is referred to as in situ, or on-site.

In a very Johnny Appleseed-esque approach (only far more calculated and observed) NSS works to get seeds out of its farm and store, and into the hands of gardeners. For example, as an in situ strategy, seeds are planted in a field or community and then their growth success is observed in that garden.

“Aside from the frozen storage strategy,” Nelson said, “we need people like you to be growing them. We need them to be in backyard gardens, in fields, in little pots on your balcony in New York City.”

While it may seem odd that an Oaxacan chili could be successfully cultivated in a home garden in North Carolina, Nelson reminds interested growers that many of the traditional Southwestern crops originated elsewhere in the world, such as in Asia or Africa, where there is a similar climate of high temperatures and low rainfall.

“Plants are tremendously versatile organisms, and from a genetic standpoint, have great potential for adaptability,” said Nelson, who also added that plants really only need the three elements of water, nutrients and sunlight to survive, which can be found just about anywhere.

So would an Oaxacan chili actually survive in a home garden in North Carolina? While the question is still currently up for debate, soon there may be an easy way to find out.

The NSS Gardener’s Network, still in its organizational phase, is a new effort designed to track the success of crops in different places across the world.

Through volunteer participation, seeds were shipped domestically and internationally to gardeners who were asked to record specific information about their crops, such as the seed’s germination period, what the final product tasted like and what they cooked with it.

The participants then reported back to NSS, which is now compiling the results.

Designed to be an on-going and continually-updated initiation as experiments are further conducted in new places, the hope is to provide an interactive way for gardeners to discover how well crops fare in their hometown.

For now, when prospective growers ask if a crop will prosper in their area, Nelson simply gives them the same advice she gave herself: “Try it, you never know.”

About Chef Janos Wilder

When it comes to cooking, every good chef knows that the closer the ingredients’ origins, the better.

For Chef Wilder, it was while working in a Boulder, Colo., restaurant where the menu is known for its reflection of the area market’s seasonal offerings, that the seed of appreciation for local foods took root.

With an abundance of delicious dishes and delighted diners as confirmation for local ingredients as an effective cooking tool, the concept flourished in his practice during a year in Bordeaux, France, where he learned the un-matched value of closeness between kitchen and garden.

“The heart and soul of French cooking is the relationship between the chef and the gardener,” Wilder said. “And the things that are closest to you are the things you should be working with.”

Returning to the states with a decided fondness for French cooking, Wilder's heart was set on opening a restaurant, Français. However, after setting Tucson as the home for his new venue, he found that fulfilling his dream while still implementing the practice of a close chef-gardener relationship might not be so easy.

French ingredients simply were not present in Tucson. As Wilder did not want to compromise the integrity of his food, his adherence to the use of local ingredients guided him to set down the croissant cutter and pick up a bean masher, using existing regional fare as a starting point for creating modern Southwest cuisine.

With the creativity of a true chef, “you figure out how to do whatever you need to do with whatever you’ve got,” Wilder said.
Upon first introduction, it seemed to Wilder that the only fresh ingredients available in the Southwest were the highly valued, though limited, holy trilogy of the region — corns, beans and squash. So the chef, who wanted more than just pinto and black beans, embarked on a search for variety and choice.

“From a chef’s perspective,” Wilder said, “the exploration was entirely practical: How do I get great stuff?”

It was this question that prompted the relationship between Wilder and NSS.

Some 15 years later, the menu of Wilder’s restaurant Janos features a wealth of local ingredients including moon and tepary beans, magdalena big cheese squash, nopalitos (the pads from the prickly pear cactus) mole, and seafood from the Sea of Cortez.
The benefits of purchasing foods locally, such as feeding the regional economy by supporting local vendors or creating a comparably small carbon footprint by cutting down on commuting distances between food origin and restaurant, are added bonuses to Wilder, who said he did not get into his practice to make an environmental statement.

But through his commitment to optimal flavor, the chef’s use of local ingredients has done exactly that–getting the flavors of native foods, once on the brink of extinction, back on the plate and into the modern palate.