Schriften zu Genetischen Ressourcen - Genres

The neglected diversity of immigrant gardens in Germany - examples from Bonn
even keep animals like chicken and sheep there. Because the people spend nearby
more time there than in their flats, these immigrant gardens should not be named and
classified as home gardens but as a separate, independent category of gardens,
comparable with the Cuban ‘conucos’ (see HAMMER et al. 1992-1994) or the ‘road
gardens’ described by ARROWSMITH et al. (1998) from rural regions of lower Austria.
Interactions and frequent travelling activities of people from different regions promote
their integration into the German society. Families manage their own gardens in
order to have enough traditional food, making them independent from the market.
The more that immigrants live and work in an area, the more arable land is used for
gardens. The rents for leasing are very low - in contrast to the price of soil.
Limitations to gardening do not exist other than the time and energy of the people.
The immigrants contribute actively to increase the diversity of cultivated plants in
Germany by farming, gardening, trading and exchanging their native germplasm.
They influence the markets through selecting of species and varieties (see HAMMER
et al. 2001). People from Asia and Russia often establish special shops with exotic
food and spices, or species which were used by Germans in former times and which
are neglected crops here today (e.g., buckwheat, Fagopyrum spp.; cranberries,
Vaccinium spp.). These exotic or forgotten foods reach more and more reputation for
German consumers as well.
Gene centres
Germany is not told to be part of a centre of crop biodiversity. It is known as a typical
non-centre (HARLAN 1971). At the moment, ten primary gene centres are defined
and accepted by scientists as bio-geographic regions where wild relatives occur
together with a very high intraspecific variation of cultivated plants. Migration
processes led to a semiconservative distribution of cultures and crops (SZABÓ 1996),
not affecting the diversity of the centres of origin. Besides these primary gene
centres, centres of biodiversity or primary hot spots of crop diversity secondary
centres exist. They are characterised by the non-origin of the respective crop.
Secondary centres are frequently geographically isolated. Wild relatives of the
respective crop are missing (SCHMALZ 1980). The evolutionary processes and
domestication of species introduced from other regions of the world continue but
selection pressure differs and new characters are evolving in new natural and cultural
regions soon, frequently with old farming tradition. In these cases, only the plant
material is transferred while the primary farmers and their culture remain. Examples
for a primary gene centre on species level is America for garden beans. The genus
Phaseolus has about 50 wild species, five of which have been domesticated from still
living wild forms of central America (DEBOUCK 2000). Western Asia and the
Mediterranean area are examples for secondary centres of this plant species. A third
118