European Blogs

[Rebsie]

Thank you thank you thank you!

What a lovely welcome. I'll share whatever I can here in the way of info and seeds. The red-podded pea is very exciting ... it looks amazing but it's going to need a couple more years to get it tasting right.

[canadamike]

Hey, Rebsie. We have somebody in south Africa here. Maybe he could grow a generation during winter? We cant ship leguminous in Australia unfortunately, so Ray won't be able to do it. But we also have a heated greenhouse in France. Can something be done in it to help??

[americangardener]

Oct 24, 2008 12:46:00 GMT -5 Rebsie said:

Well I guess it's about time I introduced myself too. I'm the person behind Daughter of the Soil, as Patrick mentioned. Thanks Patrick! I'm an amateur pea breeder based in south west England, mostly experimenting with crossing heritage/heirloom varieties.

Canadamike invited me to join up a few months ago in a very nice comment he left on my blog, but I've only just got round to it. So hello everybody.

I'm having a lot of fun exploring around here. What a wonderful resource.

Well Hello Rebsie... nice to have someone here who's interested in peas. Besides tomatoes, peas are about my favorite type of veggies to grow and especially to eat. Can't claim to be a breeder by any means.. i mostly just grow out different varieties and select for what i like best to do increases on. What i really like most are edible podded varieties.

I noticed on your site you didn't list whether those were edible podded or not in your descriptions. Nice site though.. i love it.

Well, I'd just like to join the crowd and welcome you to our group. If you ever see any varieties i have that you want let me know. I got lists of practically everything in my inventory around here somewhere.

Nice to meet you...

Dave

[johno]

Hello and welcome new friends! It's great to see more like-minded people join. I look forward to reading your blogs soon. As you can tell, we here are interested in, amongst other things, breeding new vegetables as well as preserving the old. The more we share, (and the sooner...) the better. How exciting!

[Rebsie]

Thanks for those kind offers.

I only had one plant with the true deep red and I was hoping it might turn out to be edible podded, but sadly it wasn't. Not only that, it seems to have picked up a gene for bitter flavour. There doesn't seem much point in developing a red-podded shelling pea where you have to throw away the pretty pods, so I'm aiming for an edible podded version. The plan next year is to cross it with a sibling with lovely sweet edible pods and *some* red colouring, and hope something useful will segregate from that.

Fibreless pods are in its parentage so it may have the necessary recessive lurking within it if I'm lucky.

[americangardener]

Rebsie.. sorry to hear that the deep red pea didn't turn out to be perfect the first time around. Reading thru your trials i can see you'll get it figured out one of these tries. Looks like you've got all the knowledge you'll need. I especially liked the info you had about the hybridization of peas... almost makes me want to give it a try myself.

In fact i think i just might give it a go if i can locate some purple podded varieties. Seems we just don't have any available commercially here in the states. I'm amazed at how many you have. I think in the past 5 years i've come across one variety in all the hundreds of seed catalogs i've had.. and i can't even recall what that one was named. So, if you ever feel like trading any; you know you've got alot of people over here in the states that would love to have some.

Like i said before i'm not a pea breeder.. but as far as i can figure from reading you need to regulate the Anthocyanins which are regulated in peas by a number of genes. You need the PUR gene and

the 'a' gene (acyanogenic) which regulates the complete presence or absence of anthocyanin in the plant. The 'A' allele is completely dominant, and conditions the presence of anthocyanins in various plant parts, such as the flower and the axil. The 'a' allele conditions the lack of anthocyanin in the plant. The 'b' gene regulates the hydroxylation of the B-ring of the anthocyanin molecule. The recessive 'b' allele lightens the deep red pigments of 'A' to an orange-pink color

www.ars.usda.gov/Main/docs.htm?docid=14152

I would think that with as many purple and yellow podded varieties you have you would be able to re-create the red pods with using different parents.. and i know you have the experience. So, i'll be looking forward to reading about your experiments next year. And if you need any help.. we do have some very experienced breeders here with other crops that might be able to give advice. Have you given any thought to creating the orange podded ones yet? Those i think would be very interesting too.

Dave

[Rebsie]

Thanks Dave. I just found your list of beans and peas last night and my jaw is still hanging open, so I'm sure we can arrange a swap. Some of my purple podded peas I only have in small quantities this year but I'll happily share what I've got.

Purple peas are just as difficult to get over here, if not more so. (You may be aware that in Europe it's actually ILLEGAL to sell vegetable seeds of "unregistered" varieties, so we have a very very serious problem over here with lack of diversity.) Mostly they're sold simply as "Purple Podded" without any specific variety name, but I did some trials and found they are most certainly not all the same. Most of my collection comes from the Heritage Seed Library, which is kind of the British equivalent of the SSE, but as it's only possible to order 6 varieties per year from them it's a very slow process to build up the collection!

Thanks for the link to the anthocyanin info. I am still trying to get my head round how anthocyanin is expressed in peas. It seems to have simple dominance and nice tidy Mendelian ratios in the leaf axils, but it does all sorts of weird stuff in the pods. Instead of just segregating into purples or greens, I get a lot of mixed-colour pods, and sometimes it's a soft marbled effect and other times it makes solid flashes of colour, so there are obviously a few different genes at work which I don't yet understand.

As you say though, there's lots of scope to experiment with making red pods with other crosses, and one project I'd like to try next year is to cross Alan Kapuler's yellow sugarsnap Opal Creek to a purple variety and see if I can get red sugarsnaps! I will also be pursuing some of the peachy and orangey lines from my existing project.

I'm sure I will gain a lot from the knowledge and experience of other breeders here. I have to confess to having no training in plant breeding at all ... everything I know came from reading Carol Deppe and experimenting with stuff in the garden. So I will be humbly seeking to learn from all you guys.

[plantsnobin]

Rebsie, again welcome to our group. I admit up front that I don't do much vegetable gardening, although I do enjoy growing fruits. I am not at all into breeding anything, but I am glad that there are so many here who are passionate about it. I loved the look of your red podded pea, and I would be happy to grow it in the ornamental garden. Could you tell us more about the European laws? What does it take to get something 'registered'? Is it something only large corporations can do, or is it open to everyone? Sorry for so many questions, but I am very curious about whether this is due to a company like Monsanto trying to take over the worlds food supply, or whether it is just a government control issue. I will also now publicly admit that I am a hopeless Anglophile. My husband says I should just move to England. While I do love the looks of it, I don't think I want to live in a place that I would need council permission to cut down a weed tree. We in America can't imagine living in a place with so many incredibly beautiful gardens available to visit. My local library has two videos-Great Gardens of England, and English Cottage Gardens. I checked those out so many times they wore out. Perhaps those videos are why I have an overly romantic idea of England. Karen

[PatrickW]

plantsnobin:

In theory anyone can register a variety, but in practice it's a very political process. It costs thousands of Euros, and an important aspect of it is 'genetic purity'. In order to maintain genetic purity, the variety needs to be maintained by a licensed seedsman, who insures it remains the same from one year to the next... No landraces allowed!

It's only practical to register a variety if it's to be sold in bulk to farmers.

It's funny, it's this registration process that enabled Europe to delay the approval of GMOs for a time, and even now they are very limited here.

Sweden is the only country that has an exemption for small packets of unregistered seeds.

[Rebsie]

Hello Karen. I have to admit most of England is less romantic than you might expect from looking at cottage gardens, and the weather here is very damp and grey (and we spell 'gray' funny) but overall it's not a bad place to live, and I'm lucky enough to live in a part of it where there are a lot of pretty gardens (even if mine is a mess).

I think Patrick already answered your question. The bottom line is, it's way too expensive for individuals or even small companies to register varieties, so we are generally stuck with the same-old-same-old boring commercial varieties. The only way round it is to trade seeds through non-profit organisations (where you get "free" seeds by paying a membership fee) or to set up informal seed swaps, as Patrick suggested in another thread.

Although big business benefits the most from this stupid law, it was originally brought in to protect consumers from rogue traders and ensure that all seeds are standardised and of good quality. But it had the unfortunate side effect of forcing all the small and medium seed companies out of business. A case of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. The loss of vegetable biodiversity in Europe in the last 40 years has been catastrophic.

[cff]

Hello to all the new European gardeners

Sorry to have been slow with the welcome but it's really nice to see some new members from across the big pond.

You have some really nice blogs, lots of interesting reading, if I can help anyone out with anything from our side of the world please don't be bashful in asking.

[Alan]

Wow! This is great! It is terrific to see both Patrick and Rebsie here. I have followed your blog Rebsie for a little while now and really do enjoy it. So much new information coming into this site and being shared is terrific and there will surely be some great conversations to come out of it, this and Dave (americangardeners) proposed seed business really has me floored! I am so happy to be a part of it. Welcome to the site everyone!

[canadamike]

Peachy? Orangey? ;D well, forget bits of my PM then Can I be your friend?

And none of us has a formation in breeding. We all learn on the job. Maybe Tom (Wagner) has one, but anyway, given how good he is and the age he started breeding, must have been nice for his professors to learn a bit from him

[Alan]

LOL, Tom Wagner, Ken Ettlinger, and Alan Kapuler are all great "rouge" breeders of our beautiful crops. Lots to learn from them. Sometimes I get a little lost in what they are trying to convey, but they do speak a beautiful language, the language of genetics, one which I wish I could speak, instead I stumble and fall a lot, but I always learn!

[stratcat]

Here's Sugar Magnolia Purple Snap Pea from Alan Kapuler. He first sent me the wrong seeds. I received the correct ones and planted 15 July. See the pretty purple bicolor flower.



As I got off to such a late start and only had room for very few I won't have much in the way of seed production. They are just finishing up now.

I liked the flavor best raw when the seeds were just starting to fill out a little. They weren't as sweet or tasty as Sugar Snap Pea.

Put one in the microwave for 20 seconds and it kept its color. Don't know if they cook up green.

After stringing, I can see the young peas looking and tasting good in stir fry.

Welcome to our new friends!

john