The great big thread of sunchoke info - growing, storing, eating/recipes, science facts

I read somewhere that digging sunchokes just as they are preparing to sprout - so, February in my climate & hemisphere - means the storage inulin is starting to be converted back to more readily available carbohydrates for the plant.

Has anyone got a source where this has been tested by measuring the insulin content through the winter & spring of sunchoke storage tubers?

stuff from samantha's video that i like:

- sunchokes are native to my area!

      (sacajawea dug them up and fed them to lewis and clark)

- 64,000 pounds per acre without irrigation

      (330 calories per pound -> 21.1 million calories per acre)

- grocery stores prefer potatoes because potatoes have a long shelf life

- a crop to say "fuck you" to "the system"

- more potassium than bananas

- b vitamins

- boosts immune function

- fights cancer

- mitigates diabetes

- builds soil while most other crops deplete soil

- "invasive" is the word we use for things that succeed without permission

- sunchokes do not need corporate approval

Ac Baker wrote:Has anyone got a source where this has been tested by measuring the insulin content through the winter & spring of sunchoke storage tubers?

https://cropj.com/sennoi_15_12_2021_1395_1398.pdf suggests rather small decrease when stored at 5 deg C.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12466436/#sec4-antioxidants-14-01109 suggests that different cultivars have different storage characterstics (at 0 degC) and that the form of inulin (eg. degree of polymerisation) also changes during storage.

Interesting.

So, in my climate, sunchokes overwinter well in the ground.

Then we get to decide the harvest date based upon the properties we want in our crop.

I've not been able to find inulin measurements based upon harvesting at the start of the new season of budding/sprouting growth.

But the consensus seems to be that, for a given variety and year, the inulin content will rise once the leaves are established, peaking around the first hard frost when the leaves are killed off.  This is likely to be up to 85% of dry weight.

Then the inulin content will start to fall significantly when the budding process begins in late winter or early spring, as enzymes convert the inulin to simple sugars e.g. fructose, for new plant growth, reaching a minimum just as the new leaves start to usefully photosynthesize. This could be as low as 60% of dry weight.

But I can't find a temperate climate study that tests these two figures, as yet.