RAMALLAH, West Bank — Vivien Sansour’s quest to restore the rare seeds of Palestine started with a search for Palestinian red carrots.

Stuffed red carrots used to be her favorite dish from her childhood in the 1980s, so when she returned from the United States to Palestine in 2013, she went to the local market to buy a few. “I searched all over the market in Beit Jala but was told that red carrots were no longer available anywhere. I finally came across a vegetable peddler, who told me that I have to order them beforehand so he can get them from another vegetable peddler who sold them on demand,” she told Al-Monitor. “Finally, I returned home with two because that was all they had.”

She continued, “I had two options — either to stuff and cook the carrots and enjoy my favorite stuffed red carrots, a Jerusalemite dish popular in the West Bank, or to plant them and extract seeds.”

The two carrots in her hand demonstrated to her, beyond statistics, how some of the plants and seeds of Palestine were on the way of extinction. “Their loss would mean the [end] of the tastes and colors of my heritage, my own Palestinian identity. Growing crops and farming are a central theme in Palestinian culture. So I decided to protect what I could get my hands on,” she said.