UC Davis agricultural team will go back to fruits' roots

Officials to visit Afghanistan to repatriate plants

As you enjoy a handful of seedless grapes or bite into a sweet apricot, you may owe thanks to the horticultural abundance of Afghanistan.

Scores of popular plants grown throughout the state, such as grapes, walnuts, pistachios, almonds, apricots, peaches and pomegranates, are descendants of plants native to Afghanistan and its surrounding regions. These wild cousins were imported to breed into commercial crops traits such as seedlessness, sweetness, firmness or resistance to heat, insects or disease.

Now, California is returning the favor, as UC Davis officials prepare to send back to the war-ravaged country the fruit and nut plants gathered by a daring San Francisco-born horticulturalist in Afghanistan's mountains and plains over five decades.

This winter, cuttings of about 50 varieties of Afghan plants grown in Davis and Winters will be repatriated, according to Patrick Brown, director of international programs for UC Davis' agricultural college. It is a small but important symbolic step in the rebuilding of Afghanistan's horticultural system, once a jewel of the Near East.

When agricultural experts from Afghanistan visited UC Davis last month, they were moved by the sight of the thriving native Afghanistan trees and vines.

"They said, 'Wow, it's just amazing that you guys would save for us what we can't save ourselves,' " Brown recalled. "They were really taken aback. And they were thrilled to taste grapes of an Afghan variety grown at UC Davis."

One member of the Afghan delegation that recently visited Davis, Amanullah Lutfi, 59, fondly remembers the agricultural abundance where he was raised in the mountains of Afghanistan. "We grew grapes, apples, pears, peaches, almonds, cherries -- all types of fruits," he said.

He also remembers the wild varieties of fruits and nuts he found exploring the mountains as a boy.

Afghanistan was once a major produce supplier in the Near East, exporting more than $500 million annually in products such as raisins, melons, pistachios, pomegranates, almonds and citrus fruit. And more than four-fifths of the Afghan population earns its living, directly or indirectly, through farming.

But Lutfi, who worked for more than 20 years in Afghanistan's agricultural ministry and now works in Kabul for Permanente Corp., a Los Angeles agricultural firm, said his hometown now resembles a desert. "The wars destroyed everything," he said.

Orchards and vineyards not leveled by bombs were cut down for firewood by local residents desperate for fuel during the cold winters. Then the Taliban hacked down grapevines and trees to eliminate hiding places for enemy soldiers or to cripple local economies, Lutfi said. The wild trees near his hometown are also mostly gone, cut down for firewood.