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Post by blackox on Sept 28, 2014 12:11:44 GMT -5
Was husking popcorn yesterday and ran into four unusual cobs in my strawberry popcorn. Two of the cobs were completely white and the other two were bicolor - yellow and white. The white/yellow cobs look the same as the red ones. From what I understand each silk on the growing ear of corn leads to a little flower of sorts. When that one silk is pollinated, a kernel forms. And since the kernal has only one layer of maturnal tissue, you can visually see whether or not the kernel was cross-pollinated. All of my corn cobs were completely red, except for the four unusual ones that were completely yellow/white, no off-color kernals on the individual cobs. (Is this just what happens when you get an occasional cross from a variety with gamophytic incompatibility?) What I'm trying to figure out is whether or not the cross was already in the seed packet (first year growing this popcorn, got it from Livingston seed Co.) or if the cross happened this year with a GM corn. I think that most of the GM corn here are yellow dent types (meant for ethanol) so that wouldn't explain were the white came from.
Safe to plant If I don't want GMO's in my garden? I think that I already know the answer, but I find that I prfer the yellow/white cobs over the plain red ones.
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Post by blueadzuki on Sept 28, 2014 12:21:58 GMT -5
Your probably OK. White strawberry ears occur every now and then (in fact, some catalogs actually sell an all white one) And while bicolors are not quite as common, I've seen them before as well. In fact, for all I know bicolor is quite common in strawberry, it' just that under the red, you'd have a hard time telling (unless you were willing to soak it all and hand peel each kernel one by one. Red in strawberry is a pericarp ("skin") While transposons can vary the expression of pericarp color, it's all maternal, so genetically all the kernels on the cob will have the same one, and universal color "washes" are more or less the norm.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Sept 28, 2014 15:51:00 GMT -5
I agree that the different colored cobs are due to normal recessive traits in the strawberry popcorn. It's never quite possible in an open pollinated population to eliminate or to select for a trait that is manifest only in maternal tissue. So in the red strain there will always be a few white cobs, and in the white strain there will always be a few red cobs. That's as normal as can be.
I don't think the different colored cobs mean anything with regards to GMO, gamophytic incompatibility, or cross pollination. If a cross happened this year, then only individual kernels would be affected. So the yellow kernels might be due to cross pollination this year or in a previous year. If it happened last year or before, and the pollen donor was GMO, then there is no easy way at this point to separate the GMO genes from the rest of the corn. If the cross pollination happened this year, and the pollen donor was GMO, then the yellow kernels can be discarded to eliminate the GMO... You'd also have to eliminate the yellow kernels on the red cobs. They will often have different tones of red... So some kernels may be more pink, and some more orange. Toss the oranger kernels.
GMO corn is most typically yellow and dent and those traits are dominant... So kernels pollinated with GMO pollen this year would manifest as yellow kernels, and as white/milky looking kernels instead of the clear/glassy look of popcorn. That would also be the most common manifestation if GMO contamination happened in a previous year. I think the seed company wouldn't have passed on GMO contaminated seed. But they may have passed on the yellow contamination, so whatever...
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