The Agriculture Group contains all of the varieties of Canna used in agriculture. Canna ‘Achira’ and Canna ‘Edulis ‘(Latin: eatable) are generic terms used in South America to describe the cannas that have been selectively bred for agricultural purposes, normally derived from Canna discolor.  It is grown especially for its edible rootstock from which starch is obtained, but the leaves and young seed are also edible, and Achira was once a staple food crop in Peru and Ecuador.

Farming varieties

There are some named agricultural varieties, and published comparative studies have involved:

In the Andes, the rhizome can be harvested within 6 months from planting out and the yields range from 13 – 85 tonnes per hectare, with 22 – 50 tonnes being average, though larger yields are obtained after 8 – 10 months. In Queensland, Australia they are able to obtain a yield of 5-10 tons of C. ‘Queensland Arrowroot’ tubers per acre.

Most cultivated forms do not produce fertile seed. There are also sterile triploid forms, these contain a significantly higher proportion of starch, though their cropping potential is not known.

Animal fodder

The rhizomes and leaves are good fodder for cattle and pigs and it is grown for this purpose in Tropical Africa and Hawaii, where it is harvested 4–8 months after planting. The foliage of Agricultural Canna is also used for its silage making properties, which are superior to those of corn.

Human consumption

Canna is still grown for human consumption in the Andes and also in Vietnam and southern China, where the starch is used to make cellophane noodles.

Edible qualities

Rootstock – actually a rhizome, this can be eaten either raw or cooked. It is the source of canna starch which is used as a substitute for arrowroot. The starch is obtained by rasping the rhizome to a pulp, then washing and straining to get rid of the fibres. This starch is very digestible.

The starch is in very large grains, about three times the size of potato starch grains, and can be seen with the naked eye. This starch is easily separated from the fibre of the rhizome.

The very young rhizomes can also be eaten cooked, they are sweet but fibrous. The rhizome can be very large, sometimes as long as a person’s forearm. In Peru the rhizomes are baked for up to 12 hours by which time they become a white, translucent, fibrous and somewhat mucilaginous mass with a sweetish taste.

Young shoots – these can be cooked and eaten as a green vegetable and are quite nutritious, containing at least 10% protein.

See also: Canna Cultivar Groups

The Chimera Group is where all the cultivars that result from a chimeral mutation are grouped.

This is useful, as it stops the agonising over whether Canna ‘Cleopatra’ is just a synonym of Canna ‘Yellow King Humbert’, and what about canna ‘ TyTy Red’, is it just another marketing name for ‘America’? They can now all be itemised in this group.

This grouping means that they can all be grouped together equally, until documentary or laboratory evidence provides us with facts to the contrary.

The hardest part with the Chimera Group is establishing synonyms, typically we have a situation where, for example, we know that Yellow King Humbert was first documented about 1918 and that Cleopatra appeared (identical in looks) in the 1980′s, but can we prove they are the same plants, or was Cleopatra the result of a later mutation that took place in China? With no way of proving these relationships, and so this is a much better immediate solution.

A chimera or chimaera is a single organism that is composed of two or more different populations of genetically distinct cells that originated from different zygotes involved in sexual reproduction. If the different cells have emerged from the same zygote, the organism is called a mosaic. Chimeras are formed from at least four parent cells (two fertilized eggs or early embryos fused together). Each population of cells keeps its own character and the resulting organism is a mixture of tissues.