Hi,
as it happens, I want to share word of the landrace gardening to some gardener friends, and give the talk in spanish. The translation is not a catchy word: “horticultura de la raza del terreno”.
On the other hand, the word Grex is quite simple and catchy. A “GRoup” of “X”, is a group of hybrids. I ignore if Joseph Lofthouse is using the word Grex for meaning something more specific, but it would work as a charm for ‘any seed bag containing seeds from several hybrids of the same species’.
“Grexes para adaptación local de especies vegetales”, sounds nice and is easy to remember.
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I LOVE IT!!! Perfect, yes this is how I use Grex. Grex is simply lots hybrid varieties that aren’t quite a Landrace yet.
Indeed. In spanish do they also use the term Heirloom? Maybe Diverse Heirloom can work too?
There was a lot of talking about changing “landrace gardening” to some other term in thread last year. Largely because it makes it easier to translate into most other languages. If I recall correctly, a lot of people liked the sound of “adaptation gardening.” Would that be a useful term to use in Spanish?
“Grex” is a great term, too.
Personally, I think you should use whatever term works for your language and will click in people’s brains and excite them about gardening this way. 
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Hi.
Heirloom is translated by ‘traditional’. Traditional means something that has been used for ages, and may or may not be used now. Diverse traditional seed might not work, since the meaning is different to what a diverse modern seed is. We are actually creating modern varieties, but the term ‘modern seed’ is used to refer to industrial ones, so it doesn’t fit either.
Organic modern seed is more precise, except that we are not saving just one variety but a bunch of varieties together.
The only way I see to express that idea, ‘a group of modern organic hybrids of a same species grown and saved together for selection purposes’ is by using a new word, and I think Grex is perfect for that.
A landrace can be called an “Grex adaptado”, meaning that this Grex has been successfully grown for three generations.
“Grex adaptado o Grex local”, it sounds nice to me either way.
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Grex comes from Latin. Spanish also comes from Latin. Perfect! It’s a great word.
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Technically I’d say a Grex is not necessarily a landrace but a landrace is still a Grex?
No a landrace can even become a monovariety when no new varietal inputs are being made over a long time.
PEPS is also a possibility that sprung up in France. Stands for Population Evolution Pre Selectione, so pre selected evolutionary population, but it makes it sound like i should know what i’m doing, like if i think much further than jumble up any seeds i can get my hands on,
Grex is with the x at the end, just odd, the letter of kisses and greek from the islands of love and beauty and good weather and food and throwing plates if we feel like it, Lush.
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I usually call it in spanish, “semillas mix” or “semillas sorpresa”, seed mix or surprise seeds.
I have listen to spanish people talk about landraces but not grexes.
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Me too. But I am uncertain if said mix is of hybrids of the same species, or just a collection of different crops. Well, “tomate sorpresa” could be anything, a grex or seeds of just one unnamed hybrid.
Yes, that is the point of it. It is a combination of grexes, landraces, herlooms and varieties that I got ahold or I had grown. They going to be the seeds from the best plants and fruits. And mix with new genetics.
You can always ask wich ones are they. For example my pepo seeds, I define them plants with spikes that are protected from slugs, not mildew resistant for now, most of them lighter. My tomatoes are desease free, colgar most of them, drought resistant. Melons seeds are full of hybrids, selected for taste. Mochata seeds full of hybrids, selected for drought tolerance.
I think is better focus on getting specific species instead of a variety. So I plant melons, all the varieties mix together. Save seeds, add more genetics, repeat.
In Oaxaca the word for (a version of a?) landrace is Criollo-- ‘Maiz Criollo’ is mixed/adapted from elsewhere as opposed to ‘Maiz Nativo’ which would have it’s center or Origin in that area. I don’t know how widespread that use is in Mexico generally and understand the issues with translations and using it in other locations, but found it interesting.
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Criollo is specifically a mix of native american and european, term used for their descendency or their culture. It doesn’t bring the whole meaning to it.
I don’t think I’ve settled on a good Spanish language phrase yet. I had intended to use “razas locales”, but that was before we started using “Adaptation Agriculture” in English.
In French, we ended up translating landrace as “Semences-Paysannes-Métissées” (mixed peasant woman seeds). That was partly to drop us into the center of the seed sovereignty movement in France, and also to invite that movement to reconsider their rhetoric. That turned the two syllables of “landrace” into ten syllables. Oh well. The word-count in French increased by about 30%. We spent weeks in discussions about how to translate landrace in French. I may follow a similar path in Spanish and use “semillas campesinas mixtas”, and substitute grex, criollo, or nativo in the text where appropriate.
The French version of the book is more political, and tailored specifically to issues that are important in the French speaking world. [The French version currently undergoes review by advanced readers.]
Some people in Europe use the term “new peasant varieties”. More generally in the world, “peasant food sovereignty” gets used. I wonder what farmers in Spain are using?
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“Agricultura Adaptativa” is a fine description for the whole practice and sounds good. It makes me feel like I am no longer fighting climate change but adapting to it.
What I need to clarify is if I am giving my friends a pack with seeds, they need to understand what’s inside. Preferably without too many words.
Peasant = Campesina. It’s a nice word that implies that the production is in the hands of the people.
Mix = Mixta. It just means it’s a collection of different seeds put together, a mix doesn’t need to be of the same species.
Surprise = Sorpresa. It may be used when the farmer is doing hybrids but could not or would not identify the variety. Being a surprise variety does not imply that there are several varieties in the pack.
Modern as opposed to heirloom… ‘modern’ has an ‘industrial’ meaning attached to it. If the word ‘modern’ is ever used, it would be better to use it in company of ‘peasant’. Modern peasant varieties. = Variedades campesinas modernas. Hmm, maybe.
GREX, being a new word, can mean anything we want it to mean. And I want it to be “a group of open-pollinated male-fertile non-GMO modern peasant hybrids of the same species cultivated and seed preserved together”.
As I see it, I could explain the following: A tomato GREX from my place, is a group of modern peasant varieties of tomato that is currently adapted by me for growing in my place, free of royalties or patents. A cabbage GREX from Lofthouse’s place is a group of modern peasant varieties of cabbages that are currently adapted for growing in Joseph’s place.
If I am successful (please, please), I could offer my friends this: A dryland radish GREX from Huerta Dignidad (Málaga) = un GREX de rabanitos de secano de Huerta Dignidad (Málaga, Spain).
It is short, and it carries the whole meaning.
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What I like about the word grex is that there exists a clear definition of it in horticulture and because most people I talk to don’t know the word, they will ask: What does that mean? It gives me the opportunity to explain how the seed is different from the ones they usually use.
I like to use these terms separately:
- Mix of named varieties. If I have a bunch of bags of named varieties, I put them in the same bag. Or with tomatoes (which are not promiscuous), I assume most seed will be identical to the named variety I grew them from - I put them in the same bag. This seems close to what other people here call “surprise seed”, which is a nice name!
- Grex. For a group cross of some plant. Someone has grown a few or bunch of varieties together, let them cross and then take seed. That’s how I understand a grex.
- Landrace. In Danish, we call this “landsort”, which translated directly to “land variety”. I understand that as variety which has adapted to the land it has been grown on. Either for a short time (and perhaps adapted quickly, because the genetic diversity was very high) or for a longer time (because the growing community continued to add diversity and let it adapt to the land over time).
- Type. This more common sense term allows to describe forms that are specific, but allow some vagueness (ie. diversity, not too specific, as in it stays outside the zone of inbreeding). I like how Joseph talks about long-necked moschata as a type and I’m interested in that particular type too. So I’m breeding for that and call it so.
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