will
gopher
Posts: 5
|
Post by will on Mar 2, 2014 22:04:41 GMT -5
Does anyone know where to get a small amount of temperate climate corn seed homozygous for high carotene endosperm? Shucks, even a heterozygous yellow-orange would work better than having none.
I'm a backyard corn breeder of six years and Orange Endosperm is clearly the next addition to my condensed collection of rare and colorful sweet corns.
I'd love to get my hands on an orange endosperm sweet corn, but I can handle the extra work of selecting the sweet seeds from a F1 orange/sweet hybrid if i must. In the end I'd like to introduce this trait in my cultivar to create a tasty tri-color sweet corn. I'm gradually colonizing other gardens to make a stable population with this diversity more feasible.
If you happen to know a good strain that's available let me know. I can trade seed selected from either my PNW population or the High Desert Basin population or both. Both populations descend from a narrow selection of sweet kernels I made from a unique Su/su cross that was later the pollen donor to three popular strains now growing together as 75-85 day populations. This seed will likely require more years of selection against random outliers so I would not recommend it to anyone looking for a uniform crop.
So.. where's the golden corn at? anyone know of a good variety in the range of 70-90 days to maturity?
|
|
|
Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Mar 2, 2014 22:25:21 GMT -5
There are some orange colored endosperms in the south-american synthetic composite that I grew this summer. (Descended from Cateto and Costal Tropical Flints from Argentina and Carribean). Definitely not homozygous for orange. They are a flint/flour corn. Not the same phenotype as the north american corns by those names, but close enough. Temperate adapted so not day-length sensitive. You'd have to cross it with a sweet corn and then select for sweet and whatever DTM you are after. I have picked out the orangest kernels for sharing. I'm severely limiting the quantity offered so that I can get them into as many hands as possible. . I attempted the cross to sweet corn this summer. The flowering times mostly didn't overlap, but I got a few hybrid kernels. Sorry none to share now. Perhaps this fall I'll have orange endosperm sweet corn seed to share. The cross to popcorn was much more successful.
|
|
|
Post by kevin8715 on Mar 2, 2014 22:34:07 GMT -5
When does your season start and end Will? I already have astromony domine and the high carotene corn planted. The high carotene will be detassled to make the hybrid. I expect ready cobs in 2-3 months. Not sure if there will be enough time left in your season to plant. It will need to be backcrossed again probaly to sweet.
|
|
|
Post by oxbowfarm on Mar 3, 2014 8:34:14 GMT -5
I received a small sample of orange corn from Joseph. It is really interesting stuff and I am excited to try and incorporate these South American genes into my flint. I'm a little fuzzy on how I'm going to do that given all the colored pericarp in my flint. According to this paper, it is generally possible to mass select for orange endosperm phenotype. But almost certainly they were using clear pericarp corns in the described experiments. The other thing that it seemed to indicate was that orange phenotype is not exactly correlated with the highest possible levels of bio-available vitamin A, although I'm not going to pretend that I followed the statistical analysis (I barely made it through statistics and that was longer ago than I want to remember). But there doesn't seem to be any visible phenotype to select for other than color intensity. Marker assisted selection is not a realistic option for the hobby corn breeder.
|
|
will
gopher
Posts: 5
|
Post by will on Mar 3, 2014 13:47:43 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Mar 3, 2014 14:31:15 GMT -5
I didn't keep detailed records, but I'd put the orange endosperm corn at about 80-90 DMT to milk stage. The sweet corn I crossed it to is a 60 DTM sweet corn, so among the F2 there should be a very wide range of maturity dates. (The pollination totally missed the first planting, mostly missed the second planting, and I didn't get around to planting the third crop which would have been at the perfect timing.)
The strain with the orange endosperm is from a breeding project that is making a synthetic composite from the major races of South American corn. I wasn't closely involved in the collection of germplasm, I'm just reaping the benefits. The orange color came from a race called Cateto.
Let's swap seeds. PM on the way. No worries about the inbreeding. I incorporate new corn strains into Astronomy Domine by detasseling the new varieties.
|
|
will
gopher
Posts: 5
|
Post by will on Mar 3, 2014 19:55:27 GMT -5
Oxbow - I wonder if a nutrient assessment could be arranged for cheaper to confirm bio-available Pro vitamin A or whatever it is.
Joseph - I'll PM you here when i get another moment at the computer.
|
|
|
Post by oxbowfarm on Mar 3, 2014 22:04:44 GMT -5
Back in this thread bjargakarlinn recommended Cateto Sulino, but he didn't indicate where he got it. There are several accessions that turn up when you search GRIN for "Cateto" but Sulino isn't listed with any of them. There's a "Giant Orange Corn" for sale on ebay right now, I won't link to it though because the product description looks like total BS to me.
|
|
|
Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Mar 4, 2014 0:12:51 GMT -5
Since the eBay corn is a BC1 it is definitely not an heirloom!!!
Paper chromatography is within the skill set of anyone of average intelligence and means. It can be used to assay for carotenes. The test could be semi-quantitative, but so is simply selecting for darker colors. I haven't found the right solvent and conditions to extract the colors from the starch, but that's just a matter of trial/error or research. I'm content with the look-test.
|
|
|
Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Mar 4, 2014 0:32:41 GMT -5
Cateto Cristal Sulino could be translated from Portuguese as "country bumpkin's southern crystal". I suppose that might be equivalent to "redneck southern flint".
That translation definitely fits the phenotype. The seed that I received could be turned into a great popcorn by selection only. I love traditional landrace naming conventions... The name of this corn contains a description of who grows the corn and what it is good for. Landraces are so tied to the farmers and locations in which they are grown. That gets lost in an English language research paper or seed catalog.
|
|
|
Post by oxbowfarm on Mar 4, 2014 1:02:17 GMT -5
Okay, I was totally wrong about Cateto Sulino not being in GRIN. I wasn't doing the search properly. Cateto Sulino is a Primary Race Code CATSUL. There are around 300 different accessions. A few of them look pretty darned orange, although it is hard to tell from a pic of loose grain.
|
|
|
Post by maicerochico on Mar 4, 2014 12:59:02 GMT -5
"Cateto Sulino" is the southernmost representative of the Cateto complex that spans coastal areas from northern Brazil all the way to mid-Argentina (hence the "Sulino" in its name). It was once the backbone of Argentine maize agriculture, but Corn Belt Dent and several tropical Brazilian dent races are being used now also. If anyone wants high quality, temperate-adapted Cateto germplasm, stay away from heirlooms, and look at these two GRIN accessions instead.: For medium to long season areas: www.ars-grin.gov/cgi-bin/npgs/acc/display.pl?1346627 (The kernels are yellowish in the picture, but they develop a deep orange outside of the Corn Belt where GRIN's current seed stock was grown.) This population is the source of Joseph's seed. To physiologically mature grain (but not dry) is around 115 days in southern Iowa. For short seasons: www.ars-grin.gov/cgi-bin/npgs/acc/display.pl?1597794 (This one is a derivative of the above accession, but it is a good bit earlier.) For anyone concerned about growing corn developed by multinationals, Cargill, Inc. bred and donated this material before GMO's hit the market. It has been sitting in cold-storage since 1981 when GRIN last increased their stock, so chances of transgenic contamination are close to nil. Be advised that 'coons and crows REALLY like Cateto corn. Also, the grains are about as hard as Northern Flint, so Cateto is better used for hominy than cornmeal in my opinion. Hominy made from Cateto keeps its color and is deep yellowish-orange. Chewy but very tasty and filling, especially when combined with common beans in stews. Just to show off colors, this Cuarenton Cateto variety (Little Red Flint) has the most intense endosperm color I've ever seen. www.ars-grin.gov/cgi-bin/npgs/acc/display.pl?1576260Genetically, 25% of Cargill's composite sources from this Cateto race, but they included a different variety (Cuarenton Rossi), so the color is not quite as intense.
|
|
will
gopher
Posts: 5
|
Post by will on Mar 4, 2014 13:57:59 GMT -5
i can't get enough of this www.genesys-pgr.org/ search engine. [make sure and use the modify filter tool to see the full extent of it's power] So far it would seem that the only way to get a request in would be to contact the holding institution directly.
|
|
|
Post by ilex on Mar 16, 2014 18:02:14 GMT -5
This looks orange to me: Small piece is from an orange popcorn, that looks more like yellow endosperm. Big pieces are from the corn above. I call that orange: Is this what you are looking for?
|
|
|
Post by ilex on Mar 24, 2014 5:28:09 GMT -5
Just to clarify, corn above is from a very old variety from Spain.
|
|