Carrot
Cultivars

Carrot cultivars can be grouped into two broad classes: "Eastern" carrots and "Western" carrots. A number of novelty cultivars have been bred for particular characteristics.

"Eastern" (a European and American continent reference) carrots were domesticated in Persia (probably in the lands of modern-day Iran and Afghanistan within West Asia) during the 10th century, or possibly earlier. Specimens of the Eastern carrot that survive to the present day are commonly purple or yellow, and often have branched roots. The purple color common in these carrots comes from anthocyanin pigments.

The "Western" carrot emerged in the Netherlands in the 16th or 17th century. There is a popular belief that its orange color made it popular in those countries as an emblem of the House of Orange and the struggle for Dutch independence, although there is little evidence for this beyond oral tradition and the timing. The orange color results from abundant carotenes in these cultivars.

Western carrot cultivars are commonly classified by their root shape. The four general types are:

Carrot breeding programs have developed new cultivars to have dense amounts of chemically-stable acylated pigments, such as anthocyanins, which enrich carrot color based on the density and types of anthocyanin to produce different carrot colors. One particular cultivar lacks the usual orange pigment due to carotene, owing its white color to a recessive gene for tocopherol (vitamin E), but this cultivar and wild carrots do not provide nutritionally significant amounts of vitamin E.
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