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Collard greens are a staple for many kitchens in the Southern U.S., especially in African American homes. And now the vegetable is getting the same heirloom treatment as other fruits and veggies. Harvest Public Media's Kate Grumke has the details about a research project underway near St. Louis.
KATE GRUMKE, BYLINE: A new greenhouse at the Jackie Joyner-Kersee Community Center in East St. Louis is almost the length of a football field. Inside, hundreds of collard greens are evenly planted in rows. Washington University Ph.D. candidate Antonio Brazelton walks through his research subjects.
ANTONIO BRAZELTON: Some of these are really, really smooth when you look at leaf edges. Some of these are more curlier leaf edges like kale.
GRUMKE: These collard greens are different from what you might find at a grocery store. Some even have purple veins.
BRAZELTON: As varied as they are above ground, they're also doing some really cool things below ground.
GRUMKE: Brazelton studies the roots of collard greens and wants to determine how differences might affect things like taste or hardiness amid climate change. But these aren't just any collard greens. These are heirloom varieties that have been passed down through generations. Brazelton puts a paper label on a collard.
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GRUMKE: After years dreaming up this project, in just a couple days, he'll unearth the plant to learn what's going on underground. The seeds of these plants have been on a journey to Brazelton's greenhouse. Almost 20 years ago, Ed Davis and some colleagues drove thousands of miles around the southeastern U.S. looking for unique collard greens. Davis is a geographer and scholar of agriculture at Emory & Henry University in Virginia.
ED DAVIS: We would pull up to a house and say, excuse me, I think you've got some interesting collards there. Those don't look like they were store-bought seed. And usually, people would just beam with pride.
GRUMKE: The seeds ended up in a bank run by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Now a group of collard enthusiasts are working on preserving those varieties and getting them onto people's plates through the Heirloom Collard Project. Ira Wallace is known as the godmother of this effort. She's a worker-owner of Southern Exposure Seed Exchange in Virginia. Wallace says the Heirloom Collard Project is lifting up a nutritious vegetable with a rich cultural significance for African Americans.
IRA WALLACE: It has a tie to history, to people's families, to going back South in the summer.
GRUMKE: Wallace says Brazelton's work in East St. Louis is part of a long tradition of African American science and agriculture, work that's epitomized by researchers like George Washington Carver and historically Black colleges and universities.
WALLACE: I think this is the modern child of that early work, which got a little bit interrupted with the Great Migration of Black people from the South to the North. But it's amazing.
GRUMKE: And she says it's especially important amid climate change. Back at Brazelton's greenhouse, it's finally time to dig up the plants.
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GRUMKE: A team of people are in East St. Louis to help Brazelton weigh, wash and photograph the collard greens.
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GRUMKE: He says it's surreal to get to this point after working toward it for years.
BRAZELTON: I feel like I might be a root scientist now - today (laughter).
GRUMKE: Brazelton envisions a direct impact for the science behind his project.
BRAZELTON: Hopefully, this leads to an opportunity to have more of a community-led, community-focused breeding initiative around these collards that comes out of this.
GRUMKE: For now, the collards are headed to community food programs. And Brazelton says a few will come home with him. He likes them sauteed with turkey tails.
For NPR News, I'm Kate Grumke in East St. Louis.
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