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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on Dec 7, 2012 13:06:14 GMT -5
I don't really understand what a mushroom kernel or a butterfly kernel looks like. But have you ever grown strawberry popcorn? Those kernels have an interesting shape.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Dec 7, 2012 13:08:30 GMT -5
I've been popping my landrace popcorn like crazy for the last few days, (57 batches). I dug through the compost bucket and sorted based on popped shape.
They are running 4:7 mushroom:butterfly.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Dec 7, 2012 13:34:07 GMT -5
In my popcorn, the butterfly kernels are larger in volume, so I have been inadvertently selecting for butterfly kernels, which is fine, because they have a lighter more airy texture. I haven't grown strawberry popcorn, but I still have some pointed kernels in the landrace from similar types of corn. They pop fine and so they get retained.
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Post by Drahkk on Dec 7, 2012 15:12:16 GMT -5
Mushroom kernels also tend to retain more hull (to get stuck in your teeth) than butterflys do. I might seek out a high ratio of mushroom kernels if I were making caramel corn or stringing kernels to hang on the Christmas tree, but for just popping and consuming I'd rather have a bowl full of butterflys. Here's a Canadian company selling both types of seeds (AHEM, I mean popcorn), plus a smaller but supposedly hull-less type I haven't seen before: www.jonespopcorn.com/popcorn_products.htmlMB
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Post by blueadzuki on Dec 7, 2012 16:14:09 GMT -5
Whenever I see this sort of comparison I remember the frist time I tried to follow the reccomandations of other and try to use my excess Chire's baby seed as popcorn. This was also the LAST time I did it. Chire's baby will pop (it's a mushroom type, or as I grew up hearing a "squid/jellyfish"). However because the kernels are so tiny, the resultant kernels pop to something about the size of the "tenacles" on a normal mushroom. Incidentally has anyone done any research into how kernel shape affects popped shape? That is, do "rice-type" kernels (like strawberry) pop to a significantly different shape than "pearl" type (the "normal" shape) what about those that are shoepeg, or on the other side "ancho" (wide and flat like some of the southwestern corns" or "concho" (almost spherical). Since, as far as I have seen kernel shape and corn type do not seem to be neccecarily tightly genetically linked, there probably are popcorns out there that are all of these shapes. I know from my own garden experiances that a malformed popcorn kernel often doesn't pop very well, since the kinks make weak spots in the shell that tend to rupure before sufficent pressure bulids up (one of the big reasons I no longer try to grow much popcorn; with my poor pollination, even my best cobs tend to be mostly empty space, so the kernels that are there tend to wind up round no matter what shape they are supposed to be.)
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Dec 7, 2012 16:33:45 GMT -5
I haven't been paying attention to how kernel shape affects popped shape. However, there are no cobs with "ancho" kernels in the seeds I am saving for next year, but there are cobs with ancho kernels in the compost bucket, which means that they popped so poorly that I didn't even bother recording anything about the cobs. They were rejected as soon as I took the bag out of the microwave.
I don't know if I'd be able to tell a difference between pearl and concho.
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Post by blueadzuki on Dec 7, 2012 19:25:47 GMT -5
I haven't been paying attention to how kernel shape affects popped shape. However, there are no cobs with "ancho" kernels in the seeds I am saving for next year, but there are cobs with ancho kernels in the compost bucket, which means that they popped so poorly that I didn't even bother recording anything about the cobs. They were rejected as soon as I took the bag out of the microwave. I don't know if I'd be able to tell a difference between pearl and concho. To be fair I'm not 100% sure I could either. The terms are really used for different types of corn, "pearl" is usally used in terms of popcorn, concho with flour corns. And of course other people have other terms (I used to know someone back in colledge who referred to a certain shape you would find in some dent corns (sort of half way between ancho and shoepeg, a near a big flat long triangle, as "dientes de caballo" (horse teeth) If I was pressed to it, I'd say the difference is sort of as follows, "pearly kernels tend to be ones with what one would consider "standard" flint corn kernel shape, sort of squarish in cross section tapering down towards the cob, with a domed top that is about 1.5 to 2x wider than it is deep. Concho are almost sphere's to flattened spheres with the embryo pushed down almost to the bottom, little to no tapering (i.e. the kernel at the bottom is almost as wide as it is at the top with the attachment point sort of hanging off it. As someone who grows a lot of corn, you have probably seed a fair share of "butt" cob kernels, or of kernels that developed when every kernel around them aborted (so they grew with no pressure from the other kernels to squeeze them) If you can imagine a cob where EVERY Kernel looks like that even when they do touch, THAT is sort of what concho looks like. One shape I sort of KNOW would never pop well is one I bumped into when I was playing around with the Andean stuff, that I call the hook. this is sort of an upside down version of the rice shape, where the kernel is extremely thin on the bottom and then baloons out on the "top" which is actually the side (this shape tends to go with very tight husks, so the part of the kernel on the outside tends to be super flattened. I cna almost guarntee that that shape would be a terrible popper, for the same reason it's a terrible grower (the bit near the cob where the germ is is so thing and so brittle that 9/10 the kernel will break off half way through the embryo instead of at the tip, killing the kernel.)
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Dec 7, 2012 20:00:26 GMT -5
BlueAdzuki: I can work with that definition... I found one cob with sporadic pollination and the concho type kernels. The concho type kernels popped up 25% fluffier than the pearl type kernels that were squeezed together and had 2 to 5 flat faces. I also found one cob with a howling mob type of row arrangement. When popped, it tied with 5 other cobs as the most expansive: The top 8% of what I've popped. (The other 5 are not howling mob type.)
I'll pay more attention when I do more popping.
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Post by blueadzuki on Dec 10, 2012 11:35:18 GMT -5
Another one I'd have liked to see the effect of popping on (if I still had any) would be the trait I bumped into I called "slippery" corn. This showed up in a few flour/flint cobs I bumped into once. I resulted in kernels with really thick skins that were so devoid of wrinkles, ridges bumps etc as to be almost friction free (so for example if you tried to pick a kernel up between you finger is would automatically slide out and it would roll off you palm unless you cupped it quite deeply. I sort of wonder what would happen if that was poppable (would the low friction skins make the kernels start to bounce around more than normal as the popped, turing the popping into a shrapnel-fest?) I'm actually not surprised the ancho's popped so badly, that flat top means a pretty sharp angle on the top of the kernel and a sharp angle is always a weak spot for pressure.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Dec 10, 2012 14:16:08 GMT -5
I have been inadvertently looking for "slippery" kernels, because I examine every cob under high power magnification before popping. If the kernels are cracked, then they don't pop. I haven't found any slippery, though there are some variations in kernel surface texture, but at least in my current population I can't see a clear correlation between surface texture and popping ability. I love this collaboration!!! I figured that I'd look more closely at kernel shape to determine if there I can see anything that would help me predict whether a cob is going to pop well or poorly. Because sometimes a cob has perfectly glassy kernels with the right kind of starch, and it pops poorly. Turns out that there is an easy to see trait. Hold on while I learn enough vocabulary to write about it... ... ... ... ... ... OK. First a photo of two kernels. Sorry it's a 2D image of a 3D phenomena, but bear with me. Before I explain, wanna guess which pops better? Kernels like the left pop poorly. It has a large deeply indented germ. (So many sharp curves to weaken the pressure vessel.) Kernels like the right pop well. The germ is nearly imperceptible. That will save me a lot of time in the future, because I can immediately eliminate cobs with the deeply indented germ, and save myself the trouble of test popping them. Thanks blue! I examined enough cobs and kernels to determine that the trait is variable among the kernels of a single cob, and that it's not a simple single gene segregation. Then to confirm, I took one cob with mid-range popping ability and separated the kernels into smooth kernels, or kernels with more of an indented germ. 93% of the kernels with smooth germ popped, but only 77% of kernels popped that had some degree of indentation around the germ. For what it's worth, the batch with smooth kernels was the best batch of popcorn that I have popped all season. Then I took a mix of kernels from the worst popping cobs, and separated them and popped them. The batches still ranked as poorly popping, but the kernels selected for smoothness expanded twice as much: 10X expansion vs 5X. There were 3X more grannies in the large-germ non-smooth lot. I am super content sorting seeds, so I guess I know what I'll be doing this winter with my popcorn for planting.
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Post by dustdevil on Dec 10, 2012 22:14:27 GMT -5
Perhaps the less indented smoother corn kernels retained more moisture? Shouldn't % of kernel moisture be measured?
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Post by steev on Dec 10, 2012 22:17:25 GMT -5
Please nobody be dissuaded from splitting hairs so finely; this is how progress happens when the advance isn't obvious to casual inspection.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Dec 10, 2012 22:37:03 GMT -5
Last year when I popped kernels at various percent moisture, the number of grannies didn't vary much with changes in moisture, but the final volume of popped corn varied dramatically. From those experiments I have come to believe that the phenotype responsible for high volume of popped corn is "nearly every kernel popped". I can visually select for smooth kernels in which nearly every kernel pops, and it's trivial to count non-popped kernels in a batch. I can't use my senses to select for percent moisture. For that I have to use complicated scientific procedures that only measure averages.
It would be nice to do my selection on cobs at the ideal moisture. I have already designed a machine to achieve that, but I have other higher priorities for my time and space. If I ever build a mushroom room, I may hijack that for a few weeks a year to do popcorn testing. By then I'm likely to be at "nearly every kernel popped" so testing may not be necessary any more.
Eventually, after I have selected the seeds I want for planting and sharing next year, I will dump the rest of the seeds into a bucket, and adjust the moisture to optimum levels. At that time, I'll run the shape test again... I'll sort out enough seed to run a moisture test on smooth vs large-germ kernels.
Ha!!! I don't have to moisturize the whole cob. I could take kernels off the cob, put them in cloth bags in a bucket, and add water until they reach the ideal moisture, and then do test popping. Man I love collaboration!!!
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Post by DarJones on Dec 11, 2012 16:17:22 GMT -5
note to self, Joseph is an accomplished string pusher. A takeoff on the tale of pulling a string along a flat surface vs trying to push the string along it.
DarJones
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Post by steev on Dec 11, 2012 20:11:32 GMT -5
I find string pushes easily if it's wetted and frozen.
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