I have searched for contemporary plant breeders of beetroot to learn more about this crop. I discovered that not much seems to be happening in beet breeding. Irwin Goldman has done some important work and he also created the Badger Flame Beet, which inspired me to begin this project in the first case.
Where does the earthy flavor of beets come from? Goldman’s team isolated the compound geosmin, which is primarily produces by streptomyces bacteria in the soil (when you smell freshly plowed soil, that’s geosmine), but some plants also make it themselves - beets are one of them.
Beets also have tremendous potential to make sugars, proven by sugar beets.
My takeaway from this so far is that selecting for flavor means dealing with two main factors: (1) sweetness, (2) the relative presence of geosmin (earthiness).
