North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["kieran or donna" <redherring@tnaccess.com>]

Hang in there, I'll get around to fruit eventually...
Because I'm interested in old OP corns, and due to being in Seed Savers, I
am quite interested in heterozygosity vs homozygosity.  Mother Nature is
even more interested, and she adores variety.  A good book with tendencies
in this direction is RED QUEEN, and there was an article floating on the net
titled "Do Parasites rule the World?" about the book.  Basically, because
the environment and enemies change constantly, the more variation in a
population, the better that population is going to do.  I keep a number of
varieties of beans, and I prefer mixed vars over uniform types because I can
keep more genes without so much trouble isolating them.  I do have one type
of bean, a Lazy Wife type, that seems to be much more homozygous for
recessive genes, and it seems weaker, more in need of good soil and
protection from bean mosaic than most.
    But hybrid corns are fascinating, as even farmers in Mexico knew about
them.  I have seen an article showing how one family grew two strains
together that they could sort for purity, and always got about 25% large
hybrid ears in their crop.  they also knew that planting from the hybrids
would end the advantage they had.  I have read literature that came out just
before and after the hybrid corns did, and they were an incredible jump
forward.  Prior to the hybrids, you needed to get corn seed from someone
with similar soil and no more than 100 miles north or south of you.
Suddenly, there were hybrids that seemed adapted for about anywhere, and
would yield 4-5X as much.  Given the proper inputs mind you, and very pricy
seed.  I just had someone contact me looking for Thompson Prolific corn, he
has gotten some Reid's Yellow Dent, and paid $35 a bushel for it.  Here's
the farmers paying over $100 a bushel for seed corn and getting what, $2.50
a bushel back?  A good corn, well ground and sold to the public can bring
far more.  There's a guy here grinding crummy hybrid corn selling the meal
at $1 a lb, that's $60 a bushel for his corn.  Anyway, Reid's is an
interesting cross between a northern flint and a southern dent that has been
stabilized for nearly a hundred years, but seems to be extremely adaptable
and productive, as if it has some very good mix of genes.  It is said to
rival the hybrids, esp for silage production.
    But for every two steps forward, it seems we go one step back because
one of the objections to hybrid corn is the very low level of nutrients,
including protein.  A local man said his father with his elementary school
education insisted animals didn't do as well on the hybrid corn, and he was
right.
    But now to fruit.  Corn likes heterozygosity, and basically avoids
incest, and really goes downhill in a hurry if forced to it.  Persimmons
seem to do the same, at least our native ones.   Attempts to backcross Early
Golden to it's male offspring resulted in rapid inbreeding depression.
This is kind of interesting if you look at which fruit trees are self
fertile and which are not.  Sweet cherries want X pollination, sour don't
care.  European plums tend to be self fertile, Asians and Americans don't.
Could it be that the hexaploid P. domestica carries enough variation in it's
own genes to get along fine, while the diploids need to get as much
heterozygosity as they can to do well?  Most apples want X pollination, a
lot of pears don't care.  Peaches are usually self fertile.  And then there
are species with male and female plants... muscadine grapes, persimmons,
cudrania, what else do we grow that is dioecious?  What are these plants up
to anyway, why are they doing these things, what is their strategy designed
to do?  I know about corn, no matter how bad conditions are, it will at
least tassel.  Everybody wants to be a daddy and let someone else raise the
kids, but it will also be the mom if the soil is good enough, etc.  More on
strategy in a bit.  Donna