Native fruits and vegetables represent a relatively poor part of our diet today. Whether in ancient times, the Crusades, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and especially the 19th century, people have always looked for new sources of food, hence new vegetables, fruits, plants, herbs or spices.

That is the way spinach, plum, tomato, bean, apricot, Jerusalem artichoke, and above all potato, have been introduced.

Furthermore peasants and countrypeople have always developed important mixed farming, which has enabled them to select species and varieties that suited their own needs best.

Based on self-fertilizing varieties and special grafting techniques, this bio-diversity movement spread widely, reaching its greatest extent at the end of the last century, with large circulation of books and catalogues.

Since the sixties, because of the widespread use of transport, industrial concentration, the requirements of productivity and storage, the general drift from the land, fashions and commercial demands, numerous varieties or species of ancient fruits and vegetables.have disappeared from our tables.