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Post by raymondo on Oct 2, 2011 5:31:15 GMT -5
A friend managed to get hold of a packet of Bodacious corn. Sugary enhanced corns are not available in Australia and there aren't enough seeds in the packet to maintain an se line. I suggested he use it to develop an se corn of his own. A corn that does reasonably well here is Golden Bantam. Would that be a good choice to cross with? Or would it be easier to cross it with a flour/flint type?
I've looked up a few sites that offer Bodacious and there is a bit of conflicting info out there regarding maturity. Is Bodacious a late corn? Territorial describes it as one of the latest they have grown. For those who have grown it, how would you describe it?
I'd be grateful for any advice.
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Post by grunt on Oct 2, 2011 10:22:24 GMT -5
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Oct 2, 2011 11:32:43 GMT -5
Bodacious in my garden is a mid-season corn. It comes on about a week after the earliest sweet corns that I can grow.
It's easier to start an open pollinated sugary enhanced sweet corn by using another sweet corn... Then 25% of the F2 seeds will be sugary enhanced. If you start with a flour or flint corn then only 6% of the F2 seeds are sugary enhanced. It's easier to work with larger numbers.
I used Bodacious as one of the parents of my open pollinated sugary enhanced sweet corn. I'm very pleased with it. It's more reliable in my garden in cold soil than other untreated sugary enhanced corns.
I'd use the Bodacious as the pollen donor. The F2 grows passably as a dehybridized population. Then later on s/he can add the Golden Bantam genetics to make it more robust.
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Post by DarJones on Oct 2, 2011 11:50:42 GMT -5
Bodacious was released by Crookham in 1989. It is an older se variety with good performance in a range of climates. It combines tender pericarp with up to 30% sugar. When I grew it, flavor was relatively low. Given a choice of a commercial se+ variety, I would grow a variety developed by Mesamaize because the flavor is just that tiny bit better.
If you want to develop an se+ open pollinated variety, the easiest and fastest way would be to get seed from about 20 different se+ varieties and let them intercross. Be sure to use seed sourced from as many different vendors as possible. Unfortunately, most of the se+ corn on the market today was developed by either Crookham or Mesamaize.
If you care to go the route of breeding to an OP sweet corn, Golden Bantam would be as good as any. The logistics of introgressing the se gene into an su background requires inbreeding. Be prepared to bag tassels and silks and self-pollinate a lot of corn.
If you start with a standard flint variety, you can develop an se+ easier than with either flour or flint types. The floury gene is not directly controlled by su so you can get a corn with sugary phenotype that has floury endosperm. I might better say this that the su gene blocks formation of horny endosperm, the very hard brittle part of the kernel. su does not block formation of floury starch.
DarJones
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Post by castanea on Oct 2, 2011 11:56:55 GMT -5
Bodacious was released by Crookham in 1989. It is an older se variety with good performance in a range of climates. It combines tender pericarp with up to 30% sugar. When I grew it, flavor was relatively low. Given a choice of a commercial se+ variety, I would grow a variety developed by Mesamaize because the flavor is just that tiny bit better. If you want to develop an se+ open pollinated variety, the easiest and fastest way would be to get seed from about 20 different se+ varieties and let them intercross. Be sure to use seed sourced from as many different vendors as possible. Unfortunately, most of the se+ corn on the market today was developed by either Crookham or Mesamaize. If you care to go the route of breeding to an OP sweet corn, Golden Bantam would be as good as any. The logistics of introgressing the se gene into an su background requires inbreeding. Be prepared to bag tassels and silks and self-pollinate a lot of corn. If you start with a standard flint variety, you can develop an se+ easier than with either flour or flint types. The floury gene is not directly controlled by su so you can get a corn with sugary phenotype that has floury endosperm. I might better say this that the su gene blocks formation of horny endosperm, the very hard brittle part of the kernel. su does not block formation of floury starch. DarJones Any suggestions on some of the 20 SE varieties?
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Post by DarJones on Oct 2, 2011 13:00:45 GMT -5
That would depend on the destination climate. Joseph's short season would infer a mix of short season and medium season varieties. My climate would need medium and long season selections. You could go to about a dozen vendors and purchase one pack of each medium season variety until you have 20 different selections to work from. www.johnnyseeds.com has a good selection. Burpees is overpriced, but their Breeders Choice is an excellent medium season se+. DarJones
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Post by castanea on Oct 2, 2011 13:03:10 GMT -5
That would depend on the destination climate. Joseph's short season would infer a mix of short season and medium season varieties. My climate would need medium and long season selections. You could go to about a dozen vendors and purchase one pack of each medium season variety until you have 20 different selections to work from. www.johnnyseeds.com has a good selection. Burpees is overpriced, but their Breeders Choice is an excellent medium season se+. DarJones Thanks. Do you an opinion about Burpee's Ruby Queen?
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Oct 2, 2011 14:35:17 GMT -5
When I developed my open pollinated sugary enhanced sweet corn I did it based solely on selection: No inbreeding, or self-pollination, or bagging was necessary. I practiced several types of selection: mass selection in the field based on tasting the cobs (and in the process checking for the thickness of the kernel's skin and the sweetness of the cob), and selection of individual kernels from among those cobs that passed the mass selection test.
I believe that 97% of the cobs produced in the F3 generation were homozygous sugary enhanced. That's good enough for me. Next year will be even better.
I like the idea of a mass cross of 20 varieties of sugary enhanced corns: Just make sure that they are homozygous a.k.a se+. Seed catalogs, and online references are not always accurate regarding whether a variety has one se gene or two.
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Post by castanea on Oct 2, 2011 14:43:21 GMT -5
When I developed my open pollinated sugary enhanced sweet corn I did it based solely on selection: No inbreeding, or self-pollination, or bagging was necessary. I practiced several types of selection: mass selection in the field based on tasting the cobs (and in the process checking for the thickness of the kernel's skin and the sweetness of the cob), and selection of individual kernels from among those cobs that passed the mass selection test. I believe that 97% of the cobs produced in the F3 generation were homozygous sugary enhanced. That's good enough for me. Next year will be even better. I like the idea of a mass cross of 20 varieties of sugary enhanced corns: Just make sure that they are homozygous a.k.a se+. Seed catalogs, and online references are not always accurate regarding whether a variety has one se gene or two. Then how do you know if an SE variety is homozygous?
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Oct 2, 2011 14:57:25 GMT -5
Any varieties used to make a synthetic sugary enhanced population should be "homozygous se" or "se+" which are synonyms.
But the catalogs are inconsistent, so eventually I ended up saying to myself, "which seed company's catalog do I trust the most?".
And if I can't trust them then I could grow out a small sample of the seed and test it's genetics for myself before adding it to my sugary enhanced population. Because there is also the problem of seed companies getting seeds mixed up so that the genetics inside the packet don't match what it says on the label.
I don't know if commercial sweet corn seed is currently using cytoplasmic male sterility in their seed crop. That's not something that is published in a seed catalog: but such a crop would not work as a pollen donor, and would be a very poor choice as a mother.
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Post by castanea on Oct 2, 2011 15:36:01 GMT -5
Any varieties used to make a synthetic sugary enhanced population should be "homozygous se" or "se+" which are synonyms. But the catalogs are inconsistent, so eventually I ended up saying to myself, "which seed company's catalog do I trust the most?". And if I can't trust them then I could grow out a small sample of the seed and test it's genetics for myself before adding it to my sugary enhanced population. Because there is also the problem of seed companies getting seeds mixed up so that the genetics inside the packet don't match what it says on the label. I don't know if commercial sweet corn seed is currently using cytoplasmic male sterility in their seed crop. That's not something that is published in a seed catalog: but such a crop would not work as a pollen donor, and would be a very poor choice as a mother. Which seed companies do you trust the most?
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Post by oxbowfarm on Oct 2, 2011 16:39:14 GMT -5
But the problem for Ray is that he can't legally GET 20 other se+ corns cause importing them is illegal.
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Post by raymondo on Oct 2, 2011 17:01:46 GMT -5
But the problem for Ray is that he can't legally GET 20 other se+ corns cause importing them is illegal. Sadly, that is more or less the case. It's not quite illegal but it is so difficult and costly that it might as well be illegal. This guy I know ordered the corn not knowing anything about the restrictions. His parcel didn't get stopped. That happens every now and then. Luck! Anyway, when I told him he probably had the only se corn in the country he got excited. He thought he could grow it and save one cob for seed. He was most disappointed when I explained inbreeding depression. So now he wants to know how to use it to best advantage given that he can only work with what's available here - flint, flour, sh2 and su types. I should have explained this in the first post.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Oct 2, 2011 17:14:10 GMT -5
It's trivial to send undocumented seeds across country borders: Customs agents are like anyone else: They get overwhelmed and don't inspect things properly, they get lax and let things slide, they only inspect one package in 100, they don't recognize what they are seeing, they don't care, small amounts don't trigger their quarantine/inspection criteria, non-commercial first-class letters under one ounce are exempt, etc... etc... etc...
I generally go with a consensus... If I can't find the owner/developer of the variety, then if the larger seed companies are all calling a corn homozygous se, then I go with that.
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Post by castanea on Oct 2, 2011 17:35:59 GMT -5
But the problem for Ray is that he can't legally GET 20 other se+ corns cause importing them is illegal. We know that. Dar was speculating about "If you want to develop an se+ open pollinated variety........"
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