Potential Ethnic Vegetable Crops for Production in the Southeastern United States

The value of fresh market vegetables in the United States (U.S.) was $10.9 billion in 2010, but the U.S. remains a net importer of these vegetables, mainly from Mexico. Alabama, with 7,100 acres of vegetable production ranked 25^th in the U.S.  Thus, Alabama has the potential and the need for increasing vegetable production.  The overall U.S. organic foods market exceeded $31 billion in 2011and demand for organic foods continues to increase.  Alabama's Hispanic and Asian populations grew by 145% and 71%, respectively, between 2000 and 2010.  The increasing demand for both ethnic foods and organic foods offers U.S. farmers tremendous opportunities to diversify, expand, and gain by catering to these multicultural foods. Production of high value ethnic crops that are much sought after by ethnic immigrants in the southeastern U.S. can help keep small farm enterprises viable because of greater returns from lower land and capital investment.  A two-year field research was conducted with the objective of evaluating the potential for production of a wide range of tropical vegetable crops popular in India, China, and Mexico.  About 26 different ethnic vegetable crops were established in replicated field plots and grown using organic production methods.   Indian eggplants (Solanum melongena) produced profusely and had about six to seven flushes of harvestable fruits.  For the Indian variety, the harvested fruits from the round and long varieties were about 11 and 10 kg/plant, respectively.  The Chinese variety produced about 5 kg/klant.  The yield of Chinese peppers ranged from 1.4 to 2.0 kg/plant whereas the Indian type produced about 1.3 kg/Plant.  Hispanic types ranged from 0.3 to about 1.1 kg/plant.  Among cucumbers, Chinese wax gourd (Benincasa hispida) or Indian ash gourd gave similar yields of about 45 kg/plant whereas Indian Sambhar yellow cucumber was the highest yielding with about 80 kg/plant.  Striped snake gourd (Trichosanthes cucumerina) with 32.5 kg/plantout yielded the plain stripeless type by about 10 kg/plant. Four Indian okra (Abelmoschus esculentus) types produced about 6 to 9 kg/plant. Due to time and labor limitations, all fruits and all plants could not be harvested.  Therefore, the yield results must be viewed with caution.  However, the study showed that many tropical vegetable crops can be grown as summer annuals for marketing to immigrant populations in the southeastern U.S.