It has been a staple of the Great British diet for centuries and reinvented itself with orange and purple varieties but the once popular cauliflower is feeling the heat.

A bristly upstart from an Italian branch of the family is threatening to capture cauliflower's place between the roast potatoes and carrots on Sunday dinner plates.

Cauliflower production has fallen in Britain by about 35 per cent in the past decade as fears increase that farmers are abandoning it.

Lovers of the vegetable are fighting back, however, with a campaign to persuade the public to fall in love with it again and reject fashionable “superfoods” such as broccoli. Its decline is believed to be linked to the insistence of health experts that dark green vegetables are the most nutritious.

The Brassica Growers Association insists that cauliflower — or Brassica oleracea botrytis — has unique health properties that can compete with those of broccoli. The association hopes that a high-profile public campaign will not only help to save the traditional crop but also ensure that British farmers are better able to weather the economic storm.

Phillip Effingham, the chairman of the Brassica Growers Association, said that in his 32 years growing the crop at his farm he had seen colleagues abandon the vegetable in favour of other produce. “Britain seems to have fallen out of love with the cauliflower over the last ten years and sales have been declining steadily,” he said. “We want to start a revival of cauliflower. It's so sad to see its decline due to the success of broccoli. We want to restore the cauliflower to its rightful place on our dinner tables. We are forgetting the basics — its nutritional value, the fact that it's British and its versatility.”

Government statistics show that last year only 9,503 hectares of land were used to produce cauliflowers, compared with 13,382 hectares ten years earlier. In 2007, the cauliflower crop was 120,000 tonnes, dropping from 195,000 tonnes a decade earlier.

Before the 1990s the cauliflower was a staple part of the British diet, from cauliflower cheese to an essential accompaniment to a Sunday roast. While broccoli has to be imported from mid-November to June, cauliflower is one of the few vegetables that can be grown here all year round. About 60 per cent of British cauliflowers, which are cut by hand, are grown in Lincolnshire. They are also grown in Lancashire, Kent and Cornwall.

Mr Effingham technical director of Marshalls, which farms 6,000 acres of vegetables in Lincolnshire, a third of which is cauliflower, said: “Since the early 1990s when broccoli made its mark in the business it has knocked cauliflower from its perch, possibly because of broccoli's superfood reputation. Both broccoli and cauliflowers are brassicas and have similar health benefits associated with being anticancer. But we seem to be overlooking cauliflower, a good vegetable with a lot to commend it.

“Cauliflower is every bit as good as its green cousin. By buying a British cauliflower the consumer is helping to beat the recession, helping the UK economy and its farming industry.”

Analysis: Amanda Ursell, Times nutritionist

Cauliflower gives us glucosinolates, the super-nutrient believed to boost so-called phase-2 enzymes, whose job it is to stamp on carcinogens and pollutants in our bodies. The cauliflower does not have them in such abundance as broccoli but the amounts are not trivial. Like broccoli, it also gives us, albeit less, potentially cancer-fighting indoles, also super-nutrients.

Cauliflower comes into its own, however, with its levels of lecithin, believed to help our memory. It is also crucial for the healthy development of the foetal nervous system, and is important in liver and gall-bladder health.

Cauliflower provides half the vitamin C of broccoli, but still a good slug. A 100g serving has almost 2g of the recommended 18g of daily fibre, some of which is soluble, the type that steadies blood sugar and cuts cholesterol.

Eating the green stalks, as part of a cauliflower cheese dish for instance, gives you carotenoids, which have an antioxidant role.

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