Part of the problem is that most breeders’ efforts tend to be invisibly absorbed in the commercial food chain. The term cultivar refers to the result of “improved breeding lines,” in which genetic changes have been made to an existing variety. They generally leave Cornell as seeds, destined for companies that will then grow and cross-breed the CALS material with their own varieties and improved breeding lines.
This allows commercial growers to tailor varieties to meet the needs of customers in different markets—in the U.S. and around the world, said Mary Kreitinger, executive director of the Vegetable Breeding Institute in the plant breeding and genetics section of SIPS.
Researchers might give their budding varieties unique names, “But unless a seed company markets our variety by name, we usually have no way to track it and don’t know how or where it gets to consumers,” Kreitinger said.
Seed companies often treat their products as proprietary and don’t disclose the vegetables’ origins. That policy can give businesses a competitive edge, but it leaves consumers in the dark.
Moreover, potato growers and producers, for example, care more about a variety’s overall traits than about its name. Developed at CALS, Lamoka is the most popular, publicly available potato for making potato chips in the U.S. But because farms plant multiple varieties throughout the growing season, and because large-scale producers source potatoes from different farms, you’ll never know whether you’re eating a CALS variety the next time you pop a bag of chips.