Mustard Traditional Cache

Mustard is closely related to rapeseed, canola, kale, turnips, rutabagas and radishes. It's hard to distinguish between the different yellow flowered varieties of the first three. Please BYOP and check the bottom of the page for more cache info.

Mustard

Mustard plants are any of several plant species  in the genera Brassica and Sinapis in the family Brassicaceae.

Mustard seed is used as a spice. Grinding and mixing the seeds with water, vinegar, or other liquids, creates the yellow condiment known as prepared mustard. The seeds can also be pressed to make mustard oil, and the edible leaves can be eaten as mustard greens.

History

Mustard Plant and Butterflies, early or middle Ming dynasty c. 1368–1550

According to the Saskatchewan Mustard Development Commission, "Some of the earliest known documentation of mustard's use dates back to Sumerian and Sanskrit texts from 3000 BC”

Varieties

Mild white mustard (Sinapis hirta, also referred to as Brassica alba or B. hirta.) grows wild in North Africa, the Middle East, and Mediterranean Europe, and has spread farther by long cultivation; oriental mustard (Brassica juncea, mustard greens), originally from the foothills of the Himalaya, is grown commercially in India, Canada, the UK, Denmark, and the US; black mustard (Brassica nigra, black mustard) is grown in Argentina, Chile, the US and some European countries. Canada and Nepal are the world's major producers of mustard seed, between them accounting for around 57% of world production in 2010.

Recent research has studied varieties of mustards with high oil contents for use in the production of biodiesel, a renewable liquid fuel similar to diesel fuel. The biodiesel made from mustard oil has good cold flow properties and cetane ratings. The leftover meal after pressing out the oil has also been found to be an effective pesticide.

A genetic relationship between many species of mustard, along with turnips, cabbage, and their respective derivatives, has been observed, and is described as the triangle of U.

The triangle of U is a theory about the evolution and relationships between members of the plant genus Brassica. The theory states that the genomes of three ancestral species of Brassica combined to create three of the common modern vegetables and oilseed crop species. It has since been confirmed by studies of DNA and proteins.

In agriculture, green manure is created by leaving uprooted or sown crop parts to wither on a field so that they serve as a mulch and soil amendment. The plants used for green manure are often cover crops grown primarily for this purpose. Typically, they are ploughed under and incorporated into the soil while green or shortly after flowering. Green manure is commonly associated with organic farming and can play an important role in sustainable annual cropping systems.

Green manures usually perform multiple functions that include soil improvement and soil protection.

Rapeseed (Brassica napus), also known as rape, oilseed rape, rapa, rappi, rapaseed (and, in the case of one particular group of cultivars, canola), is a bright-yellow flowering member of the family Brassicaceae (mustard or cabbage family), consumed in China and Southern Africa as a vegetable. The name derives from the Latin for turnip, rāpa or rāpum, and is first recorded in English at the end of the 14th century. Older writers usually distinguished the turnip and rape by the adjectives 'round' and 'long' (-'rooted'), respectively. Rutabagas, Brassica napobrassica, are sometimes considered a variety of B. napus. Some botanists also include the closely related B. rapa within B. napus.

B. napus is cultivated mainly for its oil-rich seed, the third-largest source of vegetable oil in the world.

In the 1970s canola was created through traditional plant cross-breeding by removing two things found in the rapeseed plant: glucosinolates and erucic acid. Erucic acid was removed because it was believed to be inedible or toxic in high doses. The newly developed plant was renamed "canola" – a combination of "Canadian" and "Oil" (or ola) to make this difference apparent.

By definition, if a seed is labeled "canola" it has to have less than 30 micromoles of glucosinolates and less than 2% of erucic acid.

The oil was originally produced from the seeds of the rape plant.  The cultivar bearing oil-rich seed was bred by Canadian botanists in the early 1970s.  By the late 1970s, the Canadian producers were ready to try exporting the oil to the USA, for use in cooking, in competition with corn oil.  The term "rape," of course, has an undesirable connotation among anglophones, so the producers' association adopted a new name.  Although the name was chosen to connote the oil's CANadian origin and its Low-Acid content, the name was chosen for its parallel to the form of the most popular corn oil of the time, Mazola.  BTW, canola isn't an acronym, it's an invented trade name, trademarked in 1978 as such.

Genetically modified organism controversy

Main article: Roundup Ready Canola

The Monsanto company has genetically engineered (GMO) new cultivars of rapeseed to be resistant to the effects of its herbicide, Roundup. They have sought compensation from farmers found to have the 'Roundup Ready' gene in canola in their fields without paying a license fee. These farmers have claimed the 'Roundup Ready' gene was blown into their fields and crossed with unaltered canola. Other farmers claim, after spraying Roundup in non-canola fields to kill weeds before planting, 'Roundup Ready' volunteers are left behind, causing extra expense to rid their fields of the weeds.

In a closely followed legal battle, the Supreme Court of Canada found in favor of Monsanto's patent infringement claim for unlicensed growing of 'Roundup Ready' in its 2004 ruling on Monsanto Canada Inc. v. Schmeiser. The case garnered international controversy, as a court-sanctioned legitimation for the global patent protection of genetically modified crops. However, Schmeiser was not required to pay damages, as he did not benefit financially from the GMO crop in his field.

In March 2008, an out-of-court settlement between Monsanto and Schmeiser agreed that Monsanto would clean up the entire GMO-canola crop on Schmeiser's farm, at a cost of about CAD$660.

The cache is tied a in, camoed, “micro”, but not a pill bottle. Please BYOP and make sure you put everything back as found.