Creating a national Field Wounds network
In 2025, the creators of the Polerani Association traveled to many places in Bulgaria. We organized forums, film festivals or participated in events organized by other organizations in different cities such as the “Hello, Health” festivals, the plum festival in Troyan, Bio Fest and others. We met many people, talked and saw the enthusiasm and energy of many of them: let's get the old varieties back!. They have taste and aroma! They preserve memories and traditions, return us to our roots and bring hope for the future. Most of the people who registered their contacts to support the national network are people with small gardens and are looking for hereditary, local varieties to use for their own food production. Another large part of the people - doctors, lawyers, teachers, computer specialists are in the cities, but want to support the network. Our site was created by a software specialist on a voluntary basis, for our common cause. We meet with farmers who want to replace imported seeds with local, Bulgarian varieties.
Meeting people who bring us their own heirloom seeds, grown in their gardens for generations, is especially exciting.
Many people tell us about fruit trees that are old, even centuries old, but still produce delicious fruit. They need to be preserved by grafting and creating new trees.
In the PoleRani Association, we have collected a lot of seeds, and many people continue to send us others. These seeds, as well as some of the abandoned fruit trees discovered by volunteers, do not have variety names or botanical names. We will test them professionally, give them names, and create an official catalog so that they can be shared, exchanged, and sold.
Preservation of traditional local seeds and development of varieties
Whether you are a volunteer seed/plant producer or a professional seed producer, it is extremely important to always keep in mind the intended purpose of the variety when propagating it and to choose the plants used for propagation accordingly. An open-pollinated variety is never completely static.
A variety that appeared on the market 100 years ago will not look the same today as it did then. With each propagation, changes occur, some intentional, others unintentionally caused by the breeder. By successively selecting the most energetic plants, the variety adapts to changing environmental conditions.
The goal of the PoleRani Association is not to preserve the state of things from 50 or 100 years ago, but to maintain the widest possible range of characteristics that are dormant in different varieties. This is achieved, on the one hand, by continuously cultivating existing varieties and collecting newly discovered forgotten seeds, but on the other hand, together with partners, we will also enter the field of new selection: based on old varieties that are open-pollinated using traditional methods.