'Rutabangin' Rutabaga Grex

Brassica napus napobrassica Origin: Milaca, MN via Europe, Russia, USA Improvement status: Grex Seeds per packet: ~150 Germination tested 11/2024: 85% Life cycle: Biennial We consider rutabagas to be a highly underappreciated and underutilized crop. For a few years, Clint Freund (our friend and colleague and co-founder of Cultivating the Commons) and Dusty had been dreaming up a super-diverse rutabaga population to encourage more breeders to work on this super cold-hardy, nutritious, long-storing crop. The idea was to get all the rutabaga varieties they could find and grow them together. Finally, in 2020, they did just that. Varieties were sourced from other seed companies, seed swaps, the USDA's National Plant Germplasm System, and Nate (who provided 'Miss Gladys McGee's Turnip', a rare heirloom rutabaga from far northern New York state'). The top plants rom the best performing varieties were saved, and this select group then inter-pollinated with each other in 2021 when they flowere