KEITH Hitchings is joining other watercress farmers in a fight to protect a tradition of more than 200 years of growing the crop in pure mineral rich flowing water.

Watercress farming has been in Mr Hitching’s family in Broad Chalke, Wiltshire for five generations, but new producers are starting to come in, cutting costs by growing the salad crop on land.

The Wiltshire farmers and others across the UK are seeking an EU ruling to ensure that inferior land grown cress cannot be sold as the “real thing.”

The watercress industry has been enjoying a renaissance as its superfood qualities have become more widely known, especially its potential to help fight cancer.

This growth in popularity has led to fears that masses of imported land cress will damage the industry and so members of the NFU Watercress Growers Association have applied to the EU for “Traditional Speciality Guaranteed” protected status of their growing methods. Mr Hitchings said: “For some growers, it could be very serious. This land-grown cress can be substituted into a bag of mixed salad. In generations to come, people could put it in their mouths and say - that’s watercress.

“The real problem is if they were to flood the market with this, in three generation’s time, people would have nothing to compare it to.”

He added: “Our watercress is nestled in the bottom of a valley with a natural bank so we are restricted in what we can do, we can’t expand by 50 acres.

“It is difficult to produce more watercress in Britain.

“But any field anywhere in Europe could grow it so we’ll lose the taste and we’ll lose the sites and, in Broad Chalke, it is very much a part of the village.” The growers have won the support of top conservationist David Bellamy, who says: “Well-managed watercress beds are essential to the physical protection of these sustainable biodiverse streams.”

Watercress (Rorippa nasturtium aquaticum) is a semi aquatic plant.

It is cultivated alongside streams and rivers where the springs rise. Farmers harness this water directly from the spring deep underground, and channel it to flow through their shallow gravel watercress beds.

The water is only “borrowed” as once its work is done, it is allowed to flow back on its original course towards the river.

Water for a traditional watercress bed is either pumped from bore holes drilled in the underlying aquifer or rises by natural, artesian pressure as springs.