Any body else breeding corn?

[bunkie]

i'm going to continue working on stabilizing the Red Miracle corn that mybighair (F3), and hristo (F3 x open) gave me last spring.

[silverseeds]

Im going to cross, the two headed dog I think it was called that alan sent me, painted mountain, and some short season drought tolerant corns I have, due to them all having a short enough season, and with the wide range of genes, in alans corn, and pinted mountain, I think I should be able to get a corn for my exact conditions, and eat the extra seed along the way......

[Alan]

Bunkie, definitely keep increasing that seed or any of the other red purple lines that Dr. Kapuler bred that you might have, they have lot's of merit and there isn't much of that stuff floating around out there anywhere so it's important to keep it going.

Silver, you will most certainly have plenty of genetics to work with and should be able to develop something perfect in 3 or 4 years time.

[blueadzuki]

I'm not sure if you could call it a formal breeding project (due to space requirments I only really have room for a maximum of 16 or so corn plants per year, so actual production sucks and everything gets really inbred really quickly. But I have for a while been working on corssing and selecting for a hypothetical corn variety I've nicknamed "Rainbow Trout" whic hif I get it to where I want would be a muticolored corn featuring kernels with sharp, tight all over specking (Ideally I like it to be a corn with noting but speckeled kernels, but that's probably genetically impossible) It's on hiatus for the next year or so due to a promise to someone to try and grow out another corn I dug up (a multicolored, sometimes speckled corn that in other respects resembes peruvian "mais chulpe" or "cancha" corn. but, someday......

[DarJones]

Just a heads up that Jala Maize is a SERIOUS tropical adapted corn that takes 9 months to mature and does NOT tassel properly until the day length gets down to about 13 hours per day. I still have 30 or 40 seed and will try growing it again this year planting right beside my house to reduce the light exposure and hopefully get it to produce.

I am doing some work with several varieties of corn with specific breeding objectives. Last year I got Cherokee Squaw corn from Georg McLaughlin and grew 2 rows. It is a fabulous corn for this area. The production was excellent. I used the old indian method of selecting the very best ears for seed corn to grow out this year. I saved a gallon of breeding seed and sold the rest to Sandhill Preservation. Glenn will sell you a pack for about $2.50 but he forgot to list it in his catalog.

I have 2 varieties of white corn that will be grown and deliberately crossed this year. One of them is a selection from a strain of Hickory King but has ears with 14 to 18 rows of kernels and very high density starch in the kernels. It is very drought tolerant and has been selected for seed survival in storage. Plants run about 9 feet tall on average though it is variable with some 7 feet and some 12 feet. This corn has very high production potential in a carefully selected cross. The second white corn is an old family line I got from my MIL. It is probably a long grown out selection from Truckers Favorite. This corn gets typically 10 to 12 feet tall. It is very well rooted and produces decent ears of corn that make excellent corn meal. My intent is to cross the two varieties of corn but I only want the tallest stalks to produce seed. I will deliberately de-tassel one variety entirely and the other variety will be selectively de-tasseled so that only the tallest produce pollen. I will have 4 rows growing with 3 rows of the first variety and 1 row of the second. That should get enough of the tallest plants to make pollen for the entire planting. As you may guess, the intent is to produce hybrid seed that will get 12 to 15 feet tall. Somewhere along the line, I may be able to get the Jala to poduce pollen which could be used on these plants.

DarJones

[canadamike]

Darjones:

A couple of years ago, I forgot some surplus corn I had started in cell s for a heads up, and finally found a spot for it but it was way too overgrown in the cells and it stunted the growth of the plants, which where not even one foot high for Pickanniny, but it is a very dwarf corn, and my Merlin, usually 7 feet high, stoped at 2.5-3 feet. But I got ears of an almost normal size. You could maybe give such a stunting treatment to your short day corn, then, since the plants will be small, cover them with something light and dark. You only need a few plants to create a hybrid...

[alkapuler]

some years ago, i grew Chires corn, a multistalked, multieared popcorn originally sent to me by RoseMarie LaCherez with Double Red Sweet Corn, starting Chires early in a greenhouse 2 months before planting Double Red outside in the garden...
several years later after selecting for crinkle (sweet seeds), i had only sweet corns with an interesting population of multistalked, multieared corns with 6-14 5-6" ears... some of the ears had intense purple seeds, others had amber, orange, yellow and gold seeds...the seeds from plants with the most ears and the most beautiful colors were then planted, harvested and packed away for the following year but we didn't plant them, just tilled the ground and got several dozen volunteers with remarkable traits; one plant 9' tall had only one stalk with large ears in every leaf axil and carnelian colored seeds; there were many plants with 4-5 large stalks with 2-5 ears per plant, some with large ears and brilliantly colored seeds but no mixes of the seed colors on any ear...in addition there were a few plants with large popcorn-like seeds having coloration unlike anything previous...we will continue to explore and develop this interesting cross

[johno]

Very interesting! I grew Chire's last year for seed increase, isolated by time.

I'm just still plugging away with Astronomy Domine stock from the initial mass cross of just under 20 varieties. I selected for cool, wet soil emergence the first year, nice ears the second year, and low soil fertility and arid conditions (never watered) last year, although it was a wet summer. In the second year (only) I introduced Stowell's Evergreen, Silver Queen, and Rainbow Inca to the gene pool. This year I want to introduce Goliath to the gene pool, a large silage corn with large ears. I noticed that all the ears last summer contained only crinkled kernals, even though I haven't selected for that yet. In previous generations there were smooth kernals present.

[pugs]

Wow Alan,

The volunteers sound fantastic, as well as the original breeding idea.

"...one plant 9' tall had only one stalk with large ears in every leaf axil and carnelian colored seeds..." --- Where these a sweet corn? How big were the ears?

"... there were many plants with 4-5 large stalks with 2-5 ears per plant, some with large ears and brilliantly colored seeds but no mixes of the seed colors on any ear..." --- Again, sweet corn? How large were the large ears? How tall were the plants?

"... in addition there were a few plants with large popcorn-like seeds having coloration unlike anything previous..." --- How large of plants and how large of ears. It sounds like these might be a popcorn, were they?

When you made the cross, did you only keep seeds from the Double Red or the Chires, or both? Did you detassle one of them?

I hope you are going to develop these lines. Please let me know when you release them, as I'd really like to try them.


Sorry about all of the questions, this is fascinating to me.

Pugs

[Alan]

I definitely look forward to those line Alan.


I have some chires baby and you've got me thinking about crossing some Astronomy Domine to it just for fun, but I'm not sure how I would want to facilitate that cross as far as mother plant and pollen doner......I love reading about the really experimental stuff like this.

[blueadzuki]

What I find paricualrly interesting is how many of those voluteers you noted as being oversized, both in plant, cob and seed given the fact that Chires Baby (I'm assuming this is the same stuff) has got to be the smallest seeded corn I have ever bumped into (or why I never was particuary fond of it as a popcorn, it produced alright but each kernel when popped was about the size of one of the little "petals" one finds on normal sized popcorn)

[spero]

I am working on two open pollinated se varieties, Top Hat (which is de-hybridized Tuxedo) and Tuxana, which is de-hybridized Sparkler. Sparkler is an f1 cross of Anasazi (su) with an se-su yellow variety. I continue to stabilize Festivity, which is a cold tolerant multi-colored sweet corn developed from Painted Mountain crossed with an sh2 variety. I hope to begin some new Painted Mountain or Painted Hills crosses this year. I am also working on a dark purple sweet, and another multi-color sweet, this one developed from Wilda's Pride. -JS

[Alan]

Sperro, are you selling seed this year? If so please feel free to post about it here, I look forward to your future developments and have enjoyed your past ones as well. I too am segregating your Sparkler F1


Let us know if you are selling seed this year and of what.

[alkapuler]

response to Pugs questions:
1. single large stalked plant had 7-8" ears, popcorn seeds
2. multistalked plants were 5-6' tall and ears 6-7"
3. haven't tried popping them; 4-5" ears
4. Double Red female x Chires male: detasseled the Double Red

[Alan]

Thanks for the information Alan. I'm going to do some sweet corn crosses to chires this year as well, for fun, and for a couple future public domain varieties. I'll probably try the crosses going both ways so that I can keep the color pallette of Astronomy Domine since you informed me the purple coloration (aka, double red expression) is maternally inherited.

I'm going to do a sweet corn cross to Supai parch as well, such a beautiful corn, I orderes some from SOC and found some outcrossing to sweet corn in the form of 15 Supai colored sweet corn seeds which I will grow out as well.