Steward helps save onion stockpile

Chris Cramer is a strange sort of superhero. It's not people he rescues from harm's way - it's onions.

Cramer, 37, a horticulture professor at New Mexico State University, has been working with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to save dozens of onion species from the brink of extinction.

"Onions are a big crop in the U.S., you know," Cramer said. "On average a person consumes 18 to 19 pounds of onion a year. The problem is: The national onion repository was in danger of losing seed and with it varieties of onions were threatened with extinction."

ample onions:

• 380 semitruck loads of onions are consumed each day in the United States.
• 19 pounds of onions are consumed by an average American each year.
• 66.8 pounds of onions are consumed by an average Libyan each year, the highest onion consumption in the world.
• 145,000 acres of onions are planted in the United States each year.
• 1,000 farmers grow onions in the United States.
• 10 pounds , 14 ounces is how much the Guinness Book of Records says the largest onion weighed. It was grown in Silsden, England.

The repository, the USDA's Plant Genetic Resources Unit in Geneva, N.Y., has 1,200 varieties of onion seeds preserved - some that date to the 1940s and Õ50s, said Larry Robertson, a geneticist at the unit.

But seeds can't stay preserved forever. To keep stockpiles reliable, seed supplies need to be refreshed by growing new crops every five years or so, Robertson said.

"We have some seeds we can't grow in the climate in New York that haven't been replaced since the 1940s," he said. "The only place they exist is in our collection. If we can't grow them, they'll cease to exist."

About 300 varieties in the stockpile are what are called short-day onions. Those onions need growing conditions found in the Southwest, Cramer said.

"Onions are very sensitive to the length of the day," he said.

It takes about three years to prepare a new batch of onion seeds from an old batch. The first year the onion seed grows into a bulb, which must be replanted during a second season so it can flower. The flower then produces seeds that can then be replanted in the third year, Cramer said.

So far, Cramer and Robertson have saved 54 threatened onion varieties, with a majority of those restored seeds going back to the genetic resources unit this year. The two plan to work on some especially difficult varieties this year and also plan to work through the rest of the rare varieties in the stockpile during the next several years, Robertson said.

"The main thing is to get the seed available and not lost," he said. "We've been prioritizing them to save as many as possible."

Of course, the question remains: Why would anyone want 1,200 onion varieties - especially the older ones that aren't used commercially? It's not just to find new and exciting ways of creating bad breath, Robertson said.

"Commercially grown onions are typically bred for certain traits, such as flavor," Robertson said. "But that breeding takes out other traits that might be useful in medicine or other areas. A lot of people are now looking at onions as a source of antioxidants, and older varieties might have better antioxidants in them than the commercial varieties we have now."

Another bonus to keeping old and strange onion varieties around is for niche specialty cooking markets. A grower in Albuquerque, for instance, might focus on specific rare onion breeds and work with local restaurants on specialized dishes with them, Cramer said.

"I actually haven't eaten any of the varieties we're bringing back," he said. "But there is market potential for them for small farmers. Some are actually old varieties that used to be grown here in New Mexico. Some are from other parts of the world, like India. Some are pink. Others are really small; they're almost like garlic."

Of course, the one group of connoisseurs Cramer says he'd like to see partake of his heroic efforts to save the humble onion is also the one group that almost always refuses to eat them.

"Oh, I have two kids, but they just don't like them," he said. "We're working on them, though. I keep cooking with them. I hope one day they'll really learn to appreciate onions like I do."

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