Béa du Roussillon

Market gardening in Roussillon is rooted in the irrigation systems introduced by the Visigoths and the reclamation of lagoons by the Moors, which from the 12th century fostered the development of the « Hortas », the gardens of the Roussillon plain. Potatoes found their place there as early as the 19th century, with 500 hectares already cultivated in 1855; between 1925 and 1936, shipments of early potatoes accounted for around 4,000 tonnes of the 44,000 tonnes of vegetables dispatched from Roussillon, ranking third behind lettuce and tomatoes. The Béa variety, registered in the official catalogue of species and varieties in 1954, quickly came to occupy a special place: by 1956, it already accounted for 70 to 80% of the early potato area on Roussillon holdings, and from 1959 its quotations on the Elne wholesale market stood apart from those of other varieties.

The geographical production area extends, within the département of Pyrénées-Orientales, across the 22 communes of the Roussillon plain divided over four basins — the Ribéral, the Salanque, the Réart, and Elne —, around the city of Perpignan. The climate is Mediterranean, with abundant sunshine and an average annual temperature exceeding 15 °C; the soils, derived from silty and sandy alluvial deposits accumulated since the Miocene, offer the loose, well-drained texture favourable to growing Béa. To shelter from the tramontane, the violent, drying wind that blows one day in three, growers border their plots — still locally known as « jardins » — with windbreak hedges of cypress or canne de Provence, shaping a landscape of small, enclosed plots unique in Roussillon.