THE INTEREST OF CONSUMERS TO SAFEGUARD PLANT BIODIVERSITY: THE CASE OF VEGETABLE PRODUCTS

This work synthesizes the results of an economic-agricultural research on vegetable agricultural biodiversity, whose species have undergone a deep process of genetic erosion due to anthropic action. Despite the loss of its vegetable genetic patrimony, still today Sicily counts several varieties, populations, ecotypes, clones and cultivars of traditional vegetable species. Besides, it misses a definition of the specific autochthon areas of the different genetic resources of the territory, for which public interventions have always been insufficient. In such a context, survival of these ecotypes is bound to the possibility of some “farmers keepers” to make sustainable incomes from it, since modern customers are particularly interested to discover tastes and traditions of the territory.