How do you do? I’m Tomoko Yoshida, a female farmer in Miura City, Kanagawa, Japan.
I and my family are engaged in farming every day and grow vegitables and fruits. Miura City is very famous for its production of vegitables, especially Dikon radish.
Do you know Daikon radish? Daikon radish belongs to the Brassicaceae family and originates from the area between Central Asia and Meiterrinean area including Italy.
The Daikon radish is charactered by its big root. In fact Daikon means big root in Japanese. Its root is mainly white, but some varieties are red or purple. Its root is eaten, but its leaves are often eaten, too. It was brought to Japan more than one thousand years ago via China after long long journey.
And since then many reginal varietie have been developed and spread throughout Japan.
The Daikon radish has been developed extraordinarily and become “The King of vegitables” in the light of production and
consumption in Japan, though the Daikon radish disappeared in many areas where once the Daikon radish was produced.
For example, in Italy the Daikon radish was stopped producing and eating since 15th century probably because of some religious reasons.
There are more than 110 regional varieties of the Daikon radish inJapan and each variety is deeply related to the reginal dietry culture. But now the Dikon radish becomes standardized to the F1 hybrid Aokubi (green neck) and almost all reginal varieties are face to disappear because of economical reasons.
In our area, we have one excellent variety, Miura Daikon. It is very good taste, especally suitable for boiled dishes and its shape is typical Daikon. But now production of Miura Daikon is decreasing rapidlly.
Diversity of the Daikon radish in Japan is the “Symbol of Diversty of Taste” and the “Symbol of the Gifted from other societies” in Japan , I think. So we Japanese must protect regional varities of the Daikon dish.
I grow Miura Daikon and also made the book about the history and the way of cooking.
The name of the book is “Miura Daikon Full Course”.
I would like to appeal the importance of protecting reginal varieties of the Diakon radish in Japan with other two communities releted to the Daikon radish from Japan.
At any rate I’m looking forward to seeing youï¼?