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Post by esoteric_agriculture on Sept 27, 2015 10:00:21 GMT -5
Corn experts- I attempted a cross between Texas Gourdseed and my own Landrace composed of various white Northern Flints. Unfortunately the timing of the varieties barely if at all overlapped. I detassled the Gourdseed corn. When I picked the Gourdseed ears, most were not pollinated, but a few were partially and a very few were mostly full. The seeds are all Gourdseed shaped. My question is if the cross worked would the seeds still be Gourdseed shaped, or did I miss detassling one? Thanks for any insights.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Sept 27, 2015 11:02:47 GMT -5
Corn tassels are easy to miss during detasseling, especially the tassels on the secondary stalks.
The "gourdseed" trait is mostly a characteristic of the mother plant... The spacing of the kernels, how crowded they are, the general shape, etc is determined independent of the genetics of the embryos. Maternally derived traits are a pain to deal with, because even if you select for cobs that have that trait, as much as 50% of the kernels on that cob might not carry the trait. So selection is a matter of successively selecting for the desired type.
If you started with a "gourdseed dent" (don't you love it how I make up vocabulary?) then perhaps seeds pollinated with flint pollen wouldn't be dented.
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Post by esoteric_agriculture on Sept 27, 2015 13:27:02 GMT -5
Basically the corn ears look like pure Gourdseed, although most are poorly filled ears. My gut feeling is that none of them are crossed. The seeds are not really like dent at all, they are all skinny, elongated and pointed. Oh well. The seed was free, but very old so germination was poor. Since there wasn't enough numbers to save pure seed, I detassled and tried for the cross. It seems the bloom times are too far apart. :/
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Post by blueadzuki on Sept 27, 2015 14:49:47 GMT -5
That could also be a factor of pollination. A lot of dents don't actually indent well if pollination is poor, because the kernels don't get the pressure from adjacent kernels pushing on them, which goes a long way to causing the dent to appear in the first place (it's the same reason why the tip and butt kernels on a lot of dents don't dent, less pressure.)
There is also the fact that you did say Texas Gourdseed, which I assume is the same Texas as the one Native Seed's SEARCH sells. That's a pretty funny looking corn to begin with. To me at least, it looks less like a classic gourdseed (with kernels that are sort of plank like and either linear or triangular) and more like a South American flour (which often have those pointy kernels) Assuming you are committed to adding a gourdseed (as opposed to simply using some leftover seed you had around) Carolina or Virginia Gourdseed might work better.
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