Member of the gourd family, bottlegourd has a light green colored fruit which grows on a climbing vine. It comes in various shapes ranging from long bottle shape to huge and rounded. We grew up eating many different recipes which use bottlegourd including savory curries, stuffed breads and desserts. Its soft white flesh with mild sweetness lends itself to many flavors. I grew up calling it lauki in hindi or doodhi in marathi. It's also known as calabash. It is harvested young to eat as vegetables but can also be harvested dried and matured to make utensils and musical instruments. Many South Asian musical instruments including sitar and veena are made using dried bottlegourd. I have also heard of it being used to make water carriers.

It's considered one of the first domesticated plants by humans and it was first domesticated not for food but for making containers, making it one of the ‘utility’ species2. It was widely present around the world including old and new world before the colonization of the new world which started in 1492. Scientists have been trying to figure out how this plant, which is native to Africa, came to be used in the new world so widely. One hypothesis says it was brought to the new world by humans who migrated to the new world from Asia via the Bering strait2. A competing hypothesis is that the wild fruit just floated from the coast of Africa to Americas via ocean currents and was independently domesticated in multiple places around the world.

This “fijil” seed is originally from al-Mastafa market in Sadr City, Iraq. Iraq is home to the Fertile Crescent – the site of the birthplace of agriculture more than 10,000 years ago – and holds a long, rich, essential history for all of humanity. 

However, the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 disrupted and destroyed much of the farming and seed-saving traditions of the region. The U.S. government issued several "rebuilding" orders, including Order 81, which prohibited farmers from saving, sharing, or replanting harvested seeds, forcing them to rely on U.S. corporations such as Monsanto, Cargill Inc., and Dow Chemical. The Iraqi national seed bank was destroyed, and since 2005, Iraq has only been able to provide 4% of its own seeds.

Beyond that, mines and cluster bombs permanently damaged arable lands, and agricultural institutions and irrigation projects were suspended, causing disastrous results to the population and land alike.

Seed-saving in Iraq – which used to be a ubiquitous practice – is now an act of resistance against colonization. These seeds were cultivated by the Iraqi Seed Collective, a group of diasporic people of Mesopotamian heritage who are saving seeds to uplift and preserve ancient culture from the fertile crescent. Below is a photo of Wafa’, an Iraqi farmer in Baghdad who is a part of “Guez wa Nahl”, the Iraqi Food Sovereignty Network, holding freshly harvested beets and white radish from her farm in Dora, a neighborhood in southern Baghdad.

Fijil Abiyad is a prolific turnip-like radish plant with large white roots that are robust and spicy. Their large leafy mustard flavor greens can be eaten fresh or cooked. The radish is traditionally served with a “khudthra” plate of herbs that is a fresh accompaniment to the main meal, for snacking and adding to fresh bread wraps called laffa. Radishes can also be roasted or added to sour “hamudth” Iraqi stews. This plant is vigorous, growing thick green seed pods, which are delicious in their own rite, and will easily self seed the following season. To avoid bolting, plant radishes in the cooler shoulder seasons.