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June 21, 2005
Historical Sunflower
The sunflower (pdf) was domesticated in North America as early as 3600 BC in the Southwest region, and later spread to the rest of the world.:
When Prince Alexander Phillip Maximillian visited the tribes of the Upper Missouri in 1832, he was impressed enough by the Mandan, Arikara, and Hidatsa sunflowers that he took them back to northern Europe, where they were further selected to provide vegetable oil for candles during Lent. Ironically, these selections came back to the northern Plains as “Mammoth Russians” just before World War II, and virtually replaced the Native American sunflowers remaining there. Within three more decades, the same usurpment occurred on all but three of twenty-four Indian reservations in the Southwest where tribes formerly grew their own heirloom varieties.
… After World War II, sunflowers became an important oilseed crop worldwide, but they were grown in monocultures where they became vulnerable to many pests and diseases. In the early 1990s Havasupai Indian Sunflowers were found to be one of the only sources of resistance to rust diseases devastating Australian sunflower crops. This resistance has now been bred into commercial industrial varieties scheduled for release in Australia, but benefit sharing with Havasupai has not been fully realized.
Intellectual property rights: finders keepers, losers weepers. A fine American tradition.
Posted by Sue at June 21, 2005 08:59 AM
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