Presentation of the line 'Joran's Improved Naturalizable Arugula Mix' (Eruca vesicaria subsp. sativa) and retrospective on its development.
Very distinctive and innovative population developed by Joran’s Seeds and Research, and marketed since 2024.
This line has the particularity of presenting whole leaves (unlobed foliage) with, depending on the individual, more or less toothed and wavy edges; associated with white or purple veins.
They were developed for their naturalization capacity in agro-ecological, permaculture or agroforestry production systems.
This improved population comes from hybrids between wild rockets collected in Italy (Eruca vesicaria subsp. vesicaria), and cultivated rockets (Eruca vesicaria subsp. sativa) naturalized in the state from Colorado, USA.
Following mutations and several years of selection, “oak leaf” and “whole” (unlobed) foliage have been stabilized within this population.
The diversity contained in this population ensures its adaptation to your environmental and growing conditions.
Sown at the end of summer: from August to September, they will require no care or watering to provide, all winter long, an abundance of aromatic foliage, very popular in salads.
Harvest leaf by leaf without exhausting the plants, collect the seeds and spread them immediately!
You will harvest salad every winter of your life!
This population perfectly combines performance, quality and eccentricity with perfect resistance.
Which makes it the best variety adapted to permaculture currently available on the market!
These plants reseed themselves and naturalize extremely easily, and manage to supplant the local flora in many environments:
Above, in the center of the photograph, a rocket 'Joran's Improved Naturalizable Arugula Mix', growing in a paved path and outgrowing the native flora of the Ardรจche department, southern France, December 19, 2024.
Introduction to rockets (Eruca vesicaria):
In agro-ecological production systems of permaculture or agroforestry, cultivated arugula (Eruca vesicaria subsp. sativa) has great potential and can advantageously substitute cultivated lettuce (Lactuca sativa subsp. sativa ).
Sown at the end of summer, they provide foliage throughout the winter without requiring water and generally remain pest and pathogen free throughout their development.
Being much less subject to gastropod predation, their sowing can be done directly in the ground, unlike lettuce.
Furthermore, unlike lettuces, they have a strong tendency to naturalize, a desirable characteristic in agro-ecological production systems.
Eruca vesicaria (syn. Eruca sativa ) is divided into two subspecies:
- Eruca vesicaria subsp. vesicaria (L.) Cav. : wild rocket. She likes rock gardens and wastelands. Its distribution area extends from the countries of the Mediterranean basin: Spain, Italy, Greece, North Africa, to West Asia; such as in Afghanistan, where it is a relatively common wild plant.
It has persistent, strongly cuculate sepals.
- Eruca vesicaria subsp. sativa (Mill.) Thell. : cultivated arugula. It is distinguished from the wild subspecies by its deciduous sepals and generally not cuculate.
Its cultivation dates back to the Ancient Greeks, the Romans also consumed its seeds.
It is now naturalized in many countries around the world.
Their flowering is initiated by photoperiods of 13 hours or more.
Sexually, rockets are highly self-incompatible, and most often, strictly allogamous.
Their chromosome number is 2n = 22.
Retrospective on its development, materials and methods:
Above, presentation of the selection work carried out on the ‘Joran’s Improved Naturalizable Arugula Mix’ line.
The way this lineage evolved was completely unpredictable!
I was very lucky!
But in variety development, bad luck is considered a professional error!
This work began long before Joran's Seeds and Research existed:
In 2012,
Joran Marรฉchal acquired an accession of wild rockets (Eruca vesicaria subsp. vesicaria) collected in Italy.
These plants were very vigorous, adaptable and resilient.
They had very finely cut green foliage, white-green veins, and stubby green, sometimes purplish, stems.
In 2013,
They are cultivated in the Ardรจche department, in the South of France.
At the end of summer, their seeds were harvested and some of them were immediately scattered along the farm's paths and greenhouses, without first loosening the soil.
No care was given to the plants.
This procedure was repeated from year to year and remains unchanged even today.
In 2016,
Joran's Seeds and Research acquires a feral accession of rocket (Eruca vesicaria subsp. sativa), naturalized in the State of Colorado, USA.
This accession, collected by Casey Piscura, was multiplied on his farm: Wild Mountain Seeds, in Carbondale, Colorado before being distributed by the American seed company Experimental Farm Network; from whom this accession was obtained.
This description is accurate.
However, we can also mention the toothed and wavy edges of the leaves of this accession, which are traits rarely observed among the arugula cultivars grown contemporary in the West.
These two heteromorphic lines were grown together, and selected for their general resistance and their naturalization capacity.
As rockets are almost exclusively cross-pollinated, hybrids with new phenotypes very quickly appeared.
Unfortunately, as this article is written retrospectively, I do not have photographs of all the diversity presented by this population.
Each of these morphotypes could have white or purple veins:
As well as round or pointed leaflets, with smooth or toothed edges:
In 2019,
A new phenotype has appeared:
When the first individuals with this “oak leaf” morphotype were discovered, their potential was immediately seen.
Luckily, several plants simultaneously presented this morphotype.
These 5 or 6 plants were preserved, some were geographically distant from the others, the risk was taken to transplant them in order to bring them together. The rest of the plants were eliminated.
In 2021,
The hoped-for phenotype appeared: three plants had whole (uncut) leaves.
One with torn edges and two with more or less jagged edges:
Only these three individuals were preserved, and were left in open pollination.
In 2024,
The line was deemed stable enough to be distributed under the name: 'Joran's Improved Naturalizable Arugula Mix'.
It includes the types of foliage: “oak leaves” and “whole leaves”, with white or purple veins.
Next objectives :
I would continue to develop other lines in an appropriate manner, depending on the mutations occurring simultaneously in several copies.
But my attention is now focused on the segregation of this population into homogeneous and stabilized morphotypes:
A population exclusively composed of plants with s entire leaves with toothed edges (elimination of “oak leaves”), underway during winter 2024-2025.
A population with spoon-shaped leaves, similar to this individual:
(of which, until now, only two individuals, delayed in time, have been observed)
Remarks:
Foliage with smooth edges, for their part, seems to be very complicated to obtain since no individual with leaves with truly smooth edges has yet appeared to date.
The “oak leaf” phenotype is unstable, because it is intermediate between the “radish leaf” morphotypes (with leaves composed of lobed leaflets) and the whole leaf type.
I think that outcrossing arugula would not make it possible to obtain a sufficiently homogeneous lineage to constitute a cultivar.
The purple veins do not seem to be a dominant trait since it did not become established in the lineage at the end of time.
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