Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Pete Vukovich <pvukovic1@yahoo.com>]

Here I can only guess and say what I've seen. My guess would be the yields will depend on a number of factors, the type of 'heirloom' , how stable its yield has been up now, how likely it is similar allele's pollinate each other. I also suspect that the more varieties of heirloom you grow the more likely you are to maintain their yield, and periodically refreshing them with new genetic stock is a good idea - as in livestock.

Observations:
I have let the broccoli open pollinate for a while now (originally an heirloom), its gotten smaller heads, the seeds seem more viable and the taste is not quite what it used to be but still is pretty good. (This was originally 2 varieties, a raab and a straight broccoli).  I haven't done any brix measurements on it or anything fancy so I can't say its not something else thats changed the taste.  Also the arugula open pollinates, its viability seems to have gone up (again no numbers), the plants are a little less leafy, but the taste is still about the same (1 original variety). The volunteer tomatoes on the other hand, seem to produce and taste about as good as their original heirloom forebearers.  Carrots look about the same as the originals, and I haven't had much success with curcuribits since I tend to lose the seeds to mold even when I clean and dry them. The kale's seem a little smaller but have maintained their taste nicely, in fact I think its improved (I think we had 3 original varieties here). The potatoes are invariant since they are started from stock - still trying to get viable seeds, I messed up collecting them too early. Will try own bean seeds for the first time next season, but it'll be a very small batch.

Caveats:
My sample sets are probably too small to be significant. I'm still new to seed saving.  I still have a lot of learning to do, haven't finished 'seed to seed' or 'breeding vegetable crops' and haven't spent enough effort learning about 'micropropagation' - which looks promising. I'm not much of a botanist either, but the idea of not buying seeds and having plants which are 'naturalized' to the local conditions is still something worth achieving.

--- On Tue, 2/9/10, Emery Mitchamore <emitch@att.net> wrote:

From: Emery Mitchamore <emitch@att.net>
Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] hybrids
To: "Healthy soil and sustainable growing" <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
Date: Tuesday, February 9, 2010, 4:03 AM

Whew!  If that's primitive, I have no hope of understanding.  I suspect that the goal for most of us is to be able to save seeds with a reasonable expectation of what they will yield in future years.  Is that what we will get if we purchase and save "open pollinated" or "heritage" varieties?

On Feb 8, 2010, at 12:53 PM, Pete Vukovich wrote:

My understanding is that a hybrid is just a cross between homozygous (true breeding) parents - the resulting offspring are F1 hybrids.

Its possible to create seeds from different alleles (eg related but different species)  which cannot produce fertile offspring - these days they appear to call these 'lethal hybrids'. Viable F1 hybrids must be recrossed each generation to maintain the desired traits, back crossing or self pollinating them produces an F2 plant which is likely to maintain the trait , but whose hybridized children will likely not. What most seed companies sell are F2 hybrids, supposedly cheaper to produce than the original F1's since you can just take a bunch of F1's and let them cross within a population without selective/hand pollination.

http://www.genetics.org/cgi/content/abstract/181/4/1545

I know my understanding of this stuff is primitive, though I suspect in spite of hundreds of years of work on it the science is primitive particularly in plants. Crossing two plants doesn't tell you that the offspring must have a specific allele (genetic type), having a specific allele doesn't tell you what the phenotype (_expression_) will be - just a rough statistical estimate depending on the number of ways genes can express a phenotype.
This doesn't even begin to take into account epigenetics (gene masking based on a combination of environmental or genetic influences), or gene-gene interactions.


--- On Sun, 2/7/10, Emery Mitchamore <emitch@att.net> wrote:

From: Emery Mitchamore <emitch@att.net>
Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] hybrids
To: "Healthy soil and sustainable growing" <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
Date: Sunday, February 7, 2010, 6:57 PM

This  note caused me to realize that I don't understand the difference between hybrids that don't produce viable seeds, those whose viable seeds don't reproduce the characteristics of the parents, and the products of (often many generations of), cross-breeding, such as mentioned below, that DO reproduce the desirable characteristics of their parents.  Can anyone explain this to a non-botanist?

On Feb 7, 2010, at 5:17 PM, Lynn Montgomery wrote:

The below is from this year's Native Seeds/SEARCH catalogue. I hope this clears up some of the questions and prejudices about hybrids. If you live in the SW region this is the best place to get really old native seed varieties. A lot of these will grow elsewhere, for those who like to experiement.

www.nativeseeds.org

About the seeds we steward...

Is our seed “hybrid”?

No and yes. No, our seeds are not “hybrid” in the sense of

being produced through controlled pollination — often with

highly inbred lines — by modern plant breeders, typically for

large-scale high-input agricultural production systems.

However, hybridization — the crossing of genetically distinct

parents, both within and between populations, varieties, and

species — has been important in the evolution of crop

diversity. It is a natural process, resulting from open-pollination,

and one that farmers have often used to their

advantage. Thus, hybridization is likely reflected in the genetic

make-up of much of our seed, making them “hybrids.”

The seeds we offer in our catalog and store were all

originally collected from subsistence and small-scale farmers

and gardeners. These are the food crops that have sustained

traditional communities for centuries. They have been selected

and nourished by farmers over generations, becoming adapted

to local environmental conditions and cropping systems, and

their individual flavors, odors, and textures have infused local

culinary and ceremonial practices. They are the result of much

open-pollination, hybridization, and subsequent selection

(both natural and human-imposed). We celebrate this

diversity!

To Grow a garden is to believe in tomorrow
- Eleanor Roosevelt

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E. E. "Mitch"  Mitchamore

www.hillcountrynatives.biz

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