ReSEED: The impact of the introduction of new seeds in the Iberian Peninsula over the centuries on what we plant, harvest and serve on our tables today.

When we sit down to eat, most of us don't think about the origin of the pepper, tomato, pineapple or sweet potato on our plate. In fact, the seeds from which these foods have grown were not always grown in our soil, nor were they part of the fields and dishes of our ancestors. They were all completely unknown centuries ago, and if they hadn't existed, the way we eat today would be very different, as would the national landscape.

On 1 November 2018, the research project Rescuing the heritage of seeds: a new approach to the dynamics of agriculture and innovation since the 18th century (ReSEED), led by the University of Coimbra (UC), was "born" with the mission of discovering the impact that plants from other continents, especially America, had on agriculture and food in the Iberian Peninsula between 1750 and 1950.

"The Portuguese and Spaniards were the protagonists of transatlantic and transoceanic voyages, and when they came into contact with new territories, new people and new agricultural and food practices, they brought different things with them, including numerous plants," explains ReSEED project director Dulce Freire, a professor at the Faculty of Economics of the University of Coimbra (FEUC) and a researcher at the UC Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies (CEIS20). The historian points out that "today we know how to cook different foods that were completely unknown in the past, and which ended up having a major impact on the way we eat".

Until the middle of the 20th century, the Iberian Peninsula "was a living laboratory for millions of people who experimented with new seeds to see if they could produce the food they needed with the resources they had", the researcher explains. Therefore, "it is crucial to remember these experiments because they could provide solutions to today's biodiversity problems, such as the scarcity of food resources and the need to find other foods that have since been abandoned, like chicharo, a seed that was forgotten and is now being used again," she adds.

This reconstruction of the past - which, as Dulce Freire points out, "contains a lot of information and a lot of knowledge that can be useful today" - was carried out by a group of researchers, mainly in the field of history, specialising in periods such as the Modern and Contemporary eras, and with knowledge of the different languages and regionalism of the Iberian Peninsula, in order to "make the best possible use of the written information we have identified", she stresses. The historians "read documents written at a time when there were no computers or typewriters, and analyse the meaning of words that have changed over the centuries," he explains. Specialists in other fields such as biology, anthropology and architecture are also working on the project.

The written documents analysed by the ReSEED team come mainly from two main groups: institutions, such as convents, monasteries or manor houses, and travellers who visited Portugal and Spain for business or pleasure. Letters about orders, travel diaries or accounting records, for example, have made it possible to "identify and understand the dynamics of the introduction of new plants for food and agriculture and how this has affected agrobiodiversity," says Dulce Freire.

In addition to information on the dynamics of food and agriculture, these sources have also made it possible to study "a large part of everyday life between 1750 and 1950, showing what life was like for ordinary people living in villages and working their fields," the historian points out. In an era without access to information resources, with a largely illiterate population, "people had to make decisions every day about whether to sow and dedicate the land to a new seed that they didn't know how it would perform, or to dedicate the land to an older seed that they already knew because their parents had grown it successfully before," she explains.

Gathering all the information - which the ReSEED research team found in archives such as the University of Coimbra Archives - "gave us a dimension of the cultivation and disappearance of some seeds, but it also gave us a dimension of changes in agrobiodiversity, which allows us to record changes in climate and land use, as well as the genetic variability of seeds," the UC professor points out.

This analysis has also made it possible to "understand living standards, institutional and political changes, and the impact of wars, pests and plagues," as well as to identify more technical information, such as "the specific name of certain species of seeds and plants, which is very important information for us to know the species and varieties that were cultivated in a given region," explains Dulce Freire. The research coordinator explains that, for example, "by knowing these names, we can understand how culturally the seeds made their way through different territories and how communities used them".

In the five and a half years since ReSEED began, all this collecting and analyzing of documentary sources has made it possible to "publish many books and articles, promote sessions in schools and train new cooks," says the researcher. The materials produced are available on the project's website, such as the book From manuscript to table: cooking recipes from the 18th century. The publication is the result of a collaboration between the project team and students from the Estoril Hotel and Tourism School, who reinterpreted the original recipes.

For Dulce Freire, there have been many surprises along the way, not least "being able to identify so many cultivated plants through documents that didn't seem to have this information at first". Equally important was "realising the diversity of seeds that were used to feed our ancestors and realising that we have lost the versatility of cultivating these seeds".

In the final phase of ReSEED, the team is preparing three major actions to share the knowledge acquired with society: a final exhibition, training courses and an innovative database that will gather "important data that will allow us to understand the dynamics of biodiversity through a detailed survey of what has been cultivated on the Iberian Peninsula in the last 500 years," says the researcher.

In addition to this broad contribution to understanding what our ancestors grew, harvested and ate, ReSEED also hopes that the research will inspire other projects in Europe and around the world to "understand local identities and how locally adapted seeds can be very useful in the face of climate and ecosystem changes and food shortages," says Dulce Freire.

_{Content Production and Editing: Catarina Ribeiro, DCOM; Inês Coelho, DCOM
Image Editing: Marta Costa, DCOM; Sara Baptista, NMAR
Translation: Diana Taborda}

_{Publication date: 25.01.2024}