Present state and future prospects for buckwheat

Clayton Campbell

Kade Research Ltd. Morden, Manitoba, Canada R6M 1E9.

Campbell, Clayton. 2004. Present state and future prospects for buckwheat. Advances in Buckwheat Research, Ninth International Symposium on Buckwheat, Prague, Czech Republic. pp. 22-25

Abstract: Buckwheat is a very unusual and unique crop. It is usually treated as a cereal but it does not resemble the cereals in growth habit, seed quality or seed composition. It also has many very desirable health components which make it a valuable part of the human diet. Buckwheat has a unique growth habit as compared to the cereals and thus fits into a much different area of crop production due to its rapid growth and long flowering period. I think that many of us are here today, not because of the similarity of buckwheat to the cereal crops, but because of the difference between buckwheat and the cereal crops and the many unique traits that this very interesting crop contains. Crop improvement programs on buckwheat in the past have concentrated on common buckwheat, Fagopyrum esculentum. However, there has been recent interest in the improvement of Tartary buckwheat, especially in the areas of ease of dehulling and in some of its nutraceutical components such as rutin and quercitin. There also has been increasing utilization of the wild species Fagopyrum homotropicum in crop improvement programs due to its self compatible characteristic which is being introgressed into common buckwheat. Although crop improvement programs have been working on the development of common buckwheat for more than one hundred years, the increased yielding ability of this crop have not kept pace with the larger acreage cereal crops. This has resulted in the replacement of buckwheat with other crops in many areas of the world and continues to put pressure on the crop as a viable long term part of any farming system. (For a more detailed report on the improvement of buckwheat please refer to “Buckwheat Crop Improvement” in the twentieth issue of Fagopyrum). So what is the present state of crop improvement programs on buckwheat and how should we proceed to ensure that this crop can better compete against the many other alternative crops that growers can produce?

Key words: buckwheat, buckwheat breeding, varietal development