Tartary Buckwheat

Tartary buckwheat is an annual plant 60 to 120 centimetres tall with heart-shaped leaves and clusters of small, greenish-white, self-pollinating flowers. Its seeds are smaller and rougher-edged than those of common buckwheat, with a grey-brown hull that is harder to remove. The kernel is yellow-green and has a noticeably bitter taste, which gave it its common name. It tolerates cold, short seasons and poor soils at high altitude, where wheat and barley may fail. Despite the grain-like use, it is not a cereal but a pseudo-grain, in the knotweed family.

Despite its name, Tartary buckwheat did not originate in Tartary, a historical region of Central Asia. It is believed to have arisen in the mountainous region of southwestern China, around the eastern Himalayas and Tibetan plateau, and from there spread through the Himalayas to Nepal, Bhutan, northern India and Pakistan, and later to Siberia, Japan and Europe. Today it is grown mostly in the highlands of Yunnan, Sichuan and Guizhou in China, in the Himalayan countries, and in small areas of Russia, Japan, Korea and Canada.

Tartary buckwheat has fed highland communities for many centuries, particularly where short growing seasons made other crops unreliable. In Nepal and Bhutan the seed is ground into flour for flatbreads, porridge and noodles. In western China it is made into noodles and flatbreads, and as a roasted grain it is brewed into a popular tea, often called bitter buckwheat tea.

The crop was introduced to Europe, including Britain and Russia, where it spread in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but it never became as popular as common buckwheat. In Japan, small amounts have long been blended into soba noodles, and in recent decades Tartary buckwheat noodles and tea have been marketed there and in Korea for their rutin content. Research on its flavonoids has grown, and breeders in China and Japan have worked to develop lower-bitterness varieties.

The seed is ground into flour for noodles, flatbreads and pancakes, or cooked whole as a porridge. Roasted seeds are steeped as tea, popular in China, Japan and Korea, with a toasty flavour. The flour is mixed with common buckwheat or wheat flour to soften the bitterness. In the Himalayas it is a traditional ingredient in dumplings and local breads, and young leaves and shoots are eaten as vegetables.

Tartary buckwheat is a gluten-free pseudo-grain providing protein, fibre, magnesium and manganese. It contains notably more rutin, a flavonoid antioxidant, than common buckwheat, along with quercetin and other polyphenols. Laboratory and small human studies have explored these compounds in relation to blood sugar and blood vessel health, but the evidence is still limited and it should not be seen as a treatment for any condition. Values are approximate and vary with variety and processing.