Historic illustrations represent interesting source material for the study of traditional crop varieties that have not been described in the literature or safeguarded in germplasm institutes or botanic gardens. Here, we present the crop diversity depicted on 143 illustrated pages of the 30-volume Seikei Zusetsu agricultural catalog, compiled in Japan around 1800 and gifted to the Dutch East India Company physician and naturalist Philipp Franz Von Siebold (1796–1866). We identified 109 different species of crops and wild edible plants in the catalog, in which cereals were represented with 35 different varieties and Brassicaceae with 29 varieties of turnips, cabbages, and radishes. We published all images online, with translations of the historic Kanji and Katakana names, of which 103 included ancient Dutch crop names. Less than half of these early nineteenth-century crop species are still grown in substantial quantities in Japan today, although some may have survived in home gardens. The Seikei Zusetsu catalog is a valuable repository of traditional Japanese knowledge on crops, agricultural practices, and food processing methods and could stimulate efforts to create more agrobiodiverse farming systems and the marketing of high-value crops to ensure the survival of distinctive food cultures.

中文翻译：

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日本的粮食损失和被遗忘的蔬菜：《成枝朱虫农业目录》（1793–1804）

历史插图代表了研究传统农作物品种的有趣素材，这些文献尚未在文献中描述，也未在种质院或植物园中得到保护。在这里，我们介绍了30种Seikei Zusetsu农业目录的143个插图页面上描绘的作物多样性，该目录在1800年左右在日本编制，并赠予荷兰东印度公司的医生和博物学家Philipp Franz Von Siebold（1796-1866年）。我们在目录中确定了109种不同的作物和野生食用植物，其中谷物代表35种不同品种，十字花科代表29种萝卜，白菜和萝卜。我们在网上发布了所有图片，并翻译了历史上的汉字和片假名名称，其中103个包含了古老的荷兰农作物名称。到今天，在日本，这些十九世纪初期的农作物种类仍不到一半，尽管其中有些可能已经在家庭花园中生存了。Seikei Zusetsu目录是日本有关农作物，农业实践和食品加工方法的传统知识的宝贵资料库，可以刺激人们努力建立更多的农业生物多样化农作体系和高价值农作物，以确保独特的饮食文化的生存。