Black carrot seed

LATIN NAME: Daucus carota subsp. sativus (black-rooted form)

COMMON NAME: Black Carrot

Every so often a root vegetable turns up in the market that makes people stop and look twice, and the black carrot is one of those. Under its dark, almost purple-black skin sits a firm, sweet, orange-to-deep-red flesh, and above the ground it looks much like any carrot, with its feathery, finely divided, green leaves and its flat-topped clusters of the small, white flowers in the second year, followed by the small, dry, bristly fruits. It grows through the cool season, sending down a long, tapering root over the autumn and the winter, and the root comes to its sweetest after a touch of the frost. It is a cultivated form of the carrot, a biennial herb of the open ground in the carrot family, grown across the old world, while its dark roots carry the same sweet, earthy ways as the orange carrot, and it is known as the black carrot.

The black carrot belongs to the carrot family, Apiaceae, and it is a biennial herb of the open ground, grown across the old world, while its dark roots carry the same sweet, earthy ways as the orange carrot, and it is known as the black carrot. The dark forms have been grown in the eastern Mediterranean and the western Asia for a very long time, and they are kept today as a colourful, old-fashioned vegetable. It is prized for its deep-coloured, sweet, crisp root.

Scientific Research & Plant Biotechnology

The black carrot keeps showing up in the food science papers, mostly because of the deep pigments packed into its root. Researchers have measured the anthocyanins and the other bright compounds in the dark flesh, and the coloured carrot keeps turning up in the food and nutritional papers as a fine subject of the functional-food study. The dark pigments have been looked at for their stable, natural colour, which holds through the processing far better than many plant dyes, and the black carrot has been studied as a source of the colour for the drinks and the pickles. It has also been looked at in the plant breeding, where the dark-rooted forms are kept as a source of the colour and the sweetness for the newer carrot varieties, and in the agronomy, where growers have studied its sowing, its harvest and its keeping. The seed of the carrot has been a subject of the study in its own right, since the fine, bristly fruits germinate best in the loose, cool ground. For a vegetable that looks so unusual, the black carrot has a quietly busy record of study.

Ecological & Economic Value & Wide Applications

In the kitchen, the black carrot earns its keep. It cooks like a carrot, but its colour holds through the roasting and the pickling, so it turns an ordinary dish into something striking, and its sweet, firm flesh is just as good grated raw into a salad. The leaves and the second-year flower heads are a fine food for the many small insects of the garden, and the deep root feeds the soil creatures as it grows. In the garden it is an easy crop for the cool season, and the ferny leaves and the second-year flower heads give the vegetable patch a softer look, while its dark root has long been valued in the traditional cooking of the old world. The black carrot is a straightforward, rewarding crop for any grower, and for the gardener it puts a striking, dark root on the table. Sow the fine seeds thinly in drills of loose, stone-free soil in the cool season, cover them with barely a centimetre of fine soil and keep the ground moist, and the first feathery leaves will be up before long.