Cabbage

Cabbage

M A Baset Mia

Scientific name: Brassica oleracea var. capitata

Local/Bangla name: ‘Badha kopi’

Taxonomic Position According to Cronquist (1988)

Kingdom         :Plantae

Division           :Magnoliophyta

Class                :Magnoliopsida

Subclass          :Dilleniidae

Order               :Capparales

Family             :Brassicaceae

Genus              :Brassica

Species            :B. oleracea var. capitata

Botanical Description of Cabbage

Habit: Biennial flowering habit, became predominant, requiring a cool period of 2-3 months of induce flowering.

Root: Tap root system

Stem: Short, swollen

Leaf: The head is encircled by a number of loose, basal leaves spreading away from the head. The basal leaves are large.

Inflorescence: Raceme

Flower: Complete, bisexual

Fruit: Siliqua

Economic Importance: cabbage is mostly used as cooked or fried vegetable, sometimes pickled or preserved by steaming and drying. If is also eaten fresh in mixed salads, it contains good nutritional contents. Per 100 g fresh edible portion it bears on average: water 91 g, protein 1.6 g, carbohydrates 6 g, fiber 0.8 g, calcium 55 mg, iron 0.8 mg and vitamin C 50 mg. Apart from being used as vegetable, the leaves are cooling and stomachic, and good for biliousness and skin diseases. Leaf juice is very effective in chronic coughs and bronchial asthma.

Table 1.: Different types of cabbage with cultivar name

Table 2. :  Cabbage varieties developed by Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Agricultural University (BSMRAU) and Horticultural Research Center (HRC), Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI)