Third-World Carrots

All of the carrots I've found in my 17 years of living as an expat have "woody" centers (yellowish inside), which have to be cut out individually, as with the two at the bottom of the picture. As you can see, even the small slender carrots have the same problem!

When I moved to North Africa from America, I was was absolutely shocked at the carrots that are here.  I found everyone hollowing out the centers, and thought, “What is this?”

Since that time, I’ve wondered if we have improved varieties of carrots in America, while the Old World is still using old-fashioned carrots.  Does anyone out there know the answer to this?

A pretty color contrast when I cut into this carrot! (It was bright green inside for the first inch.)

Domestic carrots apparently originated in Central Asia  in the area of Afghanistan about five thousand years ago, and were mostly  purple.  About one thousand years ago, a yellow mutant appeared in the area of Turkey, and spread westward.  The orange carrot of today was refined by Dutch breeders in the 1500’s.   It spread to England in the 1700’s, and the Spanish transported it to the New World.  The orange carrots were sweeter and cooked better, and soon, the other older varieties of carrots were dropped.

Color Variety in Carrots (Photo from The Carot Museum)

So, does anyone know if our woody-center carrots are due to being a certain variety, or is it farmers not watering or growing them correctly?  Does anyone know?

Expat 21

Tags: Afghanistan, Asia, carrots, Central Asia, cooking, cooking in the third world, genetically-engineered carrots, GM foods, green revolution, India, Iran, Iraq, Middle East, origin of carrots, Pakistan, Turkey, using non-improved varieties of seeds, using old-fashioned seeds, woody carrots