Beta vulgaris

Betabel

Beta vulgaris is a herbaceous species belonging to the Betoideae subfamily of the Amaranthaceae family. Economically, it is the most important crop of the large order Caryophyllales. There are numerous cultivated varieties, some for consumption as vegetables, and others as industrial raw materials. Among the first are Beta vulgaris var. cicla (chard or bledas) and the Beta vulgaris subsp. vulgaris var. conditiva (garden beets or beets) and among the latter, Beta vulgaris subsp. vulgaris var. altissima (beetroot or sugar beet), the most important for producing sucrose; and Beta vulgaris subsp. vulgaris var. crassa (beterava or fodder beet), which is a fodder crop. Three subspecies are generally recognized. All crops belong to the subspecies Beta vulgaris subsp. "vulgaris". The wild ancestor of the cultivated beet is the sea beet (Beta vulgaris subsp. maritima). In general, the most common names in Spanish are chard, beetroot, betabel, betarraga and beterraga .

Description

Common names in Spanish for edible root, according to country

It is an annual or biennial, glabrous, herbaceous plant that grows up to 2 m tall. It is branched and leafy, green to purplish-purple in color, and has slender or tuberous roots rich in sugar. The leaves, generally up to 12 by 6 cm, are petiolate; the basal ones in a rosette and ovate, cuneate to subcordate and the cauline rhombic-oblong to linear-lanceolate. The inflorescences consist of clusters of 1-4 hermaphroditic flowers, arranged in long, slender spikes. The perianth, pentamerous and accrescent, is herbaceous, greenish in color, and measures about 2-5 mm. The fruit is a pixidium dehiscent by an operculum and with a single seed.

Common name

• acelga, acelga bravía, acelga colorada, acelga common, acelga cultivada, acelga marina, acelga negro, acelga, acelga de castellanas, acelga del campo, acelga wild, acelga de loca, berza, betabel, beterrada, beterrata, celga, nabo colorado, root of abundance,

Taxonomy

Inflorescence

Fresh tugs

Selection of beets with different shades of color.

Trail cut across half.

Beta vulgaris was described by Carlos Linnaeus and published in Species Plantarum, vol. 1 p. 222, 1753.

Infraspecific taxa

Practically all of those described are considered mere synonyms, except:

• Beta vulgaris var. Trojana (Pamukç.) Ford-Lloyd & J.T Williams
• Beta vulgaris subsp. adanensis (Pamukç.) Ford-Lloyd & J.T. Williams

Sinonimia

Varieties

Handjo de acelgas

There are three recognized subspecies of Beta vulgaris. All the cultivated ones belong to the subspecies vulgaris but their ancestor, the subspecies maritima, also called sea beet, is found mainly in areas close to the Mediterranean, on the Atlantic coast from Europe and India. The third subspecies, called adanensis, is found in Greece and Syria.

The table variety has thick, red and fleshy roots, which are mainly eaten cooked; the color is due to two pigments, betacyanin and betaxanthin, which are indigestible, stain the food bolus, excrement and urine that color. However, due to its non-toxicity it is frequently used as a colorant in food products.

As a by-product of the sugar industry is the beet coseta. This industrial waste is used mainly for livestock feed. Some of the possible uses due to its high pectin content is its use for the production of biofuels through enzymatic treatment and its subsequent fermentation.

Growing sugar beets

Remolacha azucarera

Cultivation of sugar beet in Dehesa de Cuéllar, Segovia.

Sugar beet in Belgium

Sugar beets are hardy, biennial plants that can be grown commercially in a wide variety of temperate climates. During its first growing season, it produces a large storage root (1-2 kg) whose dry mass is 15-20% by weight of sucrose. If the plant is not harvested at this time, then during its second growing season, nutrients from the root will be used to produce flowers and seeds and the root will be reduced in size. In commercial beet production, the root is harvested after the first growing season.

In most temperate climates, beets are planted in the spring and harvested in the fall. In the far north of its range, growing seasons shorter, in 100 days it can produce commercially viable sugar beet crops. In warmer climates, such as Imperial Valley, California, or Andalusia, Spain, beets are a winter crop, planted in the fall and harvested in the spring.

In recent years, Syngenta AG has developed the so-called tropical sugar beet. It allows the plant to grow in tropical and subtropical regions. Beets are planted from a small seed, 1 kg of beetroot seeds counts 100,000 plant seeds. The planting density is of the order of 100,000-120,000 plants per hectare, in lines separated by about 50 cm.

Until the second half of the 20th century, sugar beet production was highly labour-intensive. Beet seed is a multi-germ glomerulus with which several seedlings are born from each seed and it was necessary to remove the excess by hand to leave only one, in a task called thinning. The variety producers got monogerm seeds and thanks to them that manual thinning is no longer necessary. Weed control was accomplished by densely planting the crops, and then had to be manually finished off with a hoe, two or even three times during the growing season.

Gathering also requires a lot of workers. Although the roots could be uprooted by a device consisting of a plow that was moved by a group of horses, the rest of the harvesting tasks were carried out by hand. The farmer took the beet by its leaves, shook the earth and cut the leaves, then each part went into a row, the root on one side, the green leaves on the other. A second worker equipped with a beet knife (a short-handled sickle-like tool), cut the crown. Working in this way, a row of beets was obtained that was transported in a cart.

Today, mechanical sowing, the application of herbicides to control weeds and mechanized harvesting have meant the non-dependence of many workers.

Harvesting is now fully mechanized. A rotary beater uses a series of blades to cut the leaf and crown (which is low in sugar) from the root. The beet harvester lifts the root and removes excess soil in a single pass over the field. A modern combine is usually capable of covering six rows at the same time. The beets are dumped into the trucks.

If the beets have to be left in storage to deliver them after some time, heaps covered with straw are formed to protect the beets from the weather. As long as the pile is well built and has proper ventilation, the beetroot does not deteriorate significantly. Beets that are frozen and then thawed produce complex carbohydrates that cause serious production problems in the factory. In the UK, loads can be hand examined at the factory gate before being accepted.

In the United States, the fall harvest begins with the first hard frost, which stops photosynthesis and subsequent root growth. Depending on the local climatic conditions, the harvest can be carried out in the course of a few weeks or extended throughout the winter months.

The harvesting and processing of the beets is known as "the campaign”, reflecting the organization's obligation to deliver the harvest at a constant rate to processing factories that operate 24 hours a day during the duration of the harvest and processing (for the United Kingdom the campaign lasts approximately 5 months).

Sebewaing, Michigan is known (by Americans) as the sugar beet capital of the world. ^{[citation needed]} Both the region and the state are major producers of sugar beets. Sebewaing is home to one of the three Michigan Sugar Company factories. The city sponsors a "Michigan Sugar Festival" each year.

Because of his experimental work growing sugar beets in alkaline soils, Arthur Stayner is considered the father and founder of the movement that made sugar manufacturing successful in Utah.

Uses

Use in human food

The most common use of this vegetable is as a vegetable, mainly cooked, but it also has other uses in food, such as:

• Sugar: that is extracted from some varieties, after several processes. The varieties used in this production tend to be triploids as they are much more productive.
• Colorful: from the remolacha the E162, red beet.

Gatronomic use

The leaves of this plant are one of the ingredients of preboggion, a mixture of herbs typical of Ligurian cuisine. It is used to prepare the soup called Borsch in Central and Eastern Europe. In El Salvador, beets are an essential part of making potato salad, which consists of diced boiled potatoes with parsley, beets, and onion. In turn, it is used to make pickles: cabbage, carrot, and grated onion in vinegar. In Colombia, the so-called red salad is well known, which consists of beets and carrots cut into small cubes.

The roots are generally used in salads, either cooked or even raw, grating them together with carrots.

It can also be consumed in the form of juice, either pure or mixed with others such as orange and carrot (what in Venezuela is known as three-in-one shake).

History of sugar beet development

Modern sugar beets date back to mid-18th century in Silesia, where the King of Prussia subsidized experiments aimed at processes for the extraction of sugar. In 1747 Andreas Marggraf isolated sugar from beets and found it in concentrations of 1.3-1.6%. He also showed that the same sugar could be extracted from beets as that produced from sugar cane. His student, Franz Karl Achard, evaluated 23 varieties of mangelwurzel (German name given to plants de Beta vulgaris) for its sugar content and selected a local variety from the town of Halberstadt in present-day Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. Moritz Baron von Koppy and his son further selected this variety for white, conical tubers. The selection was called "Weiße Schlesische Zuckerrübe", i.e. white Silesian sugar beet, and had a sugar content of about 6%. This selection is the parent of all modern sugar beets.

A royal decree led to the opening of the first factory dedicated to the extraction of sugar from beets in 1801 in Kunern, Silesia (now Konary, Poland). The Silesian sugar beet was soon introduced to France, where Napoleon opened schools specifically for the study of the plant. He also ordered 28,000 hectares (69,189.4 acres) to be devoted to growing the new sugar beet. This was in response to British blockades of the cane sugar trade during the Napoleonic Wars, which stimulated the rapid growth of a European sugar beet industry. In 1840, about 5% of the world's sugar came from sugar beets, and by 1880 this figure had increased more than tenfold, to over 50%. Sugar beets were introduced to North America after 1830 and the first commercial production began in 1879 on a farm in Alvarado, California. Sugar beets were also introduced to Chile by German settlers around 1850.

It remains a widespread cash crop for table sugar production, in part due to escalating subsidies to maintain its competitiveness against tropical sugarcane.

Sugar Beet Museum

The Sugar Beet Museum (MUREA) is the only known museum facility in the world on this product and is located in Alfambra (Teruel, Spain).