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Post by starbuckwhy on Mar 26, 2016 1:56:30 GMT -5
two of my corn seedlings are coming up and are growing in pace with the other shoots planted at the same time, except they are yellow, almost white. not sure they will be able to survive, but it would be interesting if they did. has anyone else had this happen? I think that they are growing from my glass gem corn seeds, but at this point, I'm not sure.
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Post by rowan on Mar 26, 2016 4:23:18 GMT -5
Unless they suddenly start to make chlorophyll they will die when they run out of steam.
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Post by blueadzuki on Mar 26, 2016 5:13:25 GMT -5
Yeah it happens to me all the time. I think it becomes more common as the corn seed gets older (that is that some seed becomes genetically damaged). Back when I did my first planting of Andean corn, at least 40 of the seedlings came up white (or in some cases, if the corn would normally have a flushed or red stalk, pink)
Rowan is basically right. At the moment, the corn is still feeding off of the stored food in the kernel. Once that runs out, unless the plants have developed chlorophyll (some can just be delayed, not absent) they'll die.
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Post by maicerochico on Mar 27, 2016 21:55:22 GMT -5
It's a polygenic recessive trait, I believe. I usually find albinos at a rate of 3 - 7 per 1000 plants. Back in 2014 I did an ear-to-row sowing from one of my best plants and got 6 albinos out of 25 individuals. The fantastic looking mother plant just happened to be an albinism carrier, and I unknowingly picked it to save a bunch of extra seed from.
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Post by richardw on Mar 28, 2016 0:04:02 GMT -5
i had a couple in spring too, i never thought twice about pulling them as soon as i saw them
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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on Mar 28, 2016 1:08:53 GMT -5
Yes, when i first started planting my Indian flint corn several years ago i got quite a few. Since the start of my corn breeding started from one cob it made sense as it is a recessive trait. Most like this will die. One year though (2010?) i think i had a few who did produce chlorophyll and did survive. One was unique in that directly down each seedling leaf it was half white and half green. That plant was a runt and did not grow well, but it was the only one that i ever saw have a purple stripe down a green leaf in adulthood. Sadly it did not produce much and was not able to save seed so the trait was lost. Im not surprised you've seen it in glass gem as i suspect that is a highly inbred line.
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Post by starbuckwhy on Mar 28, 2016 4:00:53 GMT -5
makes sense. thanks, everyone! one of the seedlings has started to produce a little chlorophyll on the tip. I think I will keep them around, it will be interesting to see how they progress if it survives. it was keeping pace with the rest of the seedlings until now but has fallen behind in the last couple of days. what you said about losing the interesting trait in your other plant brings to mind something else I had been wondering about. can pollen be saved for the same purposes that one would save seeds? or does it degrade in some significant way that would make it useless? I was also thinking about irradiating pollen rather than seeds to bring out new traits, but I haven't been able to find any research papers that talk about irradiating or otherwise mutating pollen for plant breeding. I am about to transplant all of this first batch of seedlings and start the next batch. I'll let you know how it goes
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Post by blueadzuki on Mar 28, 2016 5:37:33 GMT -5
Yes, when i first started planting my Indian flint corn several years ago i got quite a few. Since the start of my corn breeding started from one cob it made sense as it is a recessive trait. Most like this will die. One year though (2010?) i think i had a few who did produce chlorophyll and did survive. One was unique in that directly down each seedling leaf it was half white and half green. That plant was a runt and did not grow well, but it was the only one that i ever saw have a purple stripe down a green leaf in adulthood. Sadly it did not produce much and was not able to save seed so the trait was lost. Im not surprised you've seen it in glass gem as i suspect that is a highly inbred line. Maybe that one had some Japonica striped in its heriatage
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Post by maicerochico on Mar 28, 2016 9:19:51 GMT -5
If you wish to keep them around (I would not), make certain to detassel any albinos that green up so that the trait does not spread further into your population.
I don't know anything about saving pollen, unfortunately.
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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on Mar 28, 2016 9:28:26 GMT -5
Yes, when i first started planting my Indian flint corn several years ago i got quite a few. Since the start of my corn breeding started from one cob it made sense as it is a recessive trait. Most like this will die. One year though (2010?) i think i had a few who did produce chlorophyll and did survive. One was unique in that directly down each seedling leaf it was half white and half green. That plant was a runt and did not grow well, but it was the only one that i ever saw have a purple stripe down a green leaf in adulthood. Sadly it did not produce much and was not able to save seed so the trait was lost. Im not surprised you've seen it in glass gem as i suspect that is a highly inbred line. Maybe that one had some Japonica striped in its heriatage It's possible as i had planted some japonica the year before, but hard to say. It did not seem to show other leaf traits consistent with japonica. It is possible that the transposons found in the kernels i was selecting for moved some anthocyanin genes around to new areas. Or perhaps both were true... hmm.. If that last idea is correct then it might be possible to recreate it by crossing a japonica corn with a line that has darker and more active anthocyanin genes. i1010.photobucket.com/albums/af224/keen101/Garden%202010/SUNP0002.jpgWhile we are on this subject, does anyone know of a corn that has high instance of varigation other than japonica? What i'm really asking for is any lines that are just variegated green and white (without pink)? There had been a dwarf corn marketed many years ago from the research i had done at one point. I forget the name though, but i think it's long been out of cultivation even if i could remember.
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Post by starbuckwhy on Mar 30, 2016 21:28:06 GMT -5
interesting development. my three year old uprooted about half of my seedlings (strain was selected against toddler mischief?). and when I was repotting them I noticed that the albino seedlings had significantly more mycorrhizae on the roots. that's weird, right? possible explanations that come to mind: the same mutation that causes the albinism causes the plant to be more compatible with the fungus (optimistic). the plant is actually dying and the fungus mycelium I saw were from fungi that were eating it alive.(pessimistic) the starvation that is caused by the albinism is causing the plant to produce more of the sugars that feed the fungi as a byproduct of metabolizing it's stored sugar. or, the plant has been producing a lot of sugars that it can't convert into energy because it does not have enough chlorophyll. (it's diabetic corn) I suppose I could gather more information by eating the plant, but at this point I am enjoying the entertainment value of the little guys too much to do that without good reason
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Post by DarJones on Mar 30, 2016 23:59:35 GMT -5
A plant without chlorophyll does not produce sugar. It also will not produce normal amounts of Dimboa which protects the plant against fungal invasion. Disrupting the chlorphyll biopath causes a lot of bad things to happen to a plant. I had a few pure white seedlings from Bloody Butcher back in 1988. They die after about 2 weeks.
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Post by steev on Mar 31, 2016 1:44:46 GMT -5
I applaud any efforts to support albino (vampire) corn since I figure it will grow at night, thereby utilizing hours useless for other plants.
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Post by starbuckwhy on Apr 1, 2016 2:03:58 GMT -5
that makes sense. but would it just be more susceptible to harmful fungal infections or would it also be more hospitable to beneficial fungal infestations? I ask because they seem to be surprisingly healthy. I was expecting them to have died by now, but they actually seem to have tolerated the toddler damage better than many of the other plants. don't get me wrong, I'm sure they will die eventually, it's just kinda interesting to observe the differences alongside the plants that sprouted at the same time under the same conditions. thank you for the info, I often have trouble figuring out the right key words to google when looking for papers on this sort of subject, specific information like that is really helpful.
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Post by blueadzuki on Apr 1, 2016 5:47:54 GMT -5
Some of this reminds me of a little experiment I did a few years ago, when I had a plant of variegated Spanish (broad leaf) thyme (which roots readily from cuttings) I took and rooted a branch whose leaves were all pure white (and stem pink) to see how long it would last without being able to feed off the energy of the green containing branches around it. In this case once it rooted it immediately began to make green leaves itself and in fact outgrew all of the other planted branches (it wound up being my overwintering plant, the one I don't eat so I can still have the herb the next year).
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