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Post by philagardener on Sept 24, 2020 18:29:07 GMT -5
Welcome, samdixza ! Are you growing in Oaxaca?
Glad to have you drop over to the Welcome thread and share a bit more about your gardens and interests! |
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Post by DarJones on Sept 25, 2020 1:05:37 GMT -5
I can't answer your query about the source of Oaxacan Green corn, however, I can talk about the genetics which may help a bit. First, Oaxacan Green is a primitive variety of corn meaning that it has traits that are not normally found in modern breeding lines. The traits I would point out are the tendency to produce short ears with kernels that have a lot of soft starch. The green color is not usually stable in this variety. I've seen a lot of blue, some red, and quite a bit of yellow that was sold as pure Oaxacan Green. I think most of this is a result of outcrossing. It should not be very difficult to stabilize a pure breeding green corn if someone wanted to take the time. The only other thing I can think of that is relevant is that Oaxacan Green does show some traits that are common in corn varieties from Mexico but it does not show adaption to short day regions. This is highly suggestive that it originated in a different region but for some reason got the "Oaxacan" name stuck on it.
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Post by reed on Sept 25, 2020 10:41:21 GMT -5
I didn't pay much attention to keeping it green but when I grew OG from Native Seed Search it grew very well here in Indiana. It shrugged off drought and matured fast. I was able to grow two crops in one season. Once I had a volunteer from the first crop grow and make a nice ear with almost no water at all other than the one downpour that made it sprout. I've kept it in my overall grex that I'm working on now.
I have a question though, does anyone know how aleurone color is inherited? I'm working on a flint/four corn with varied but solid color individual ears. A little aleurone color has sneaked in, just a kernel or two on a few ears. Do I have to discard the whole ear to be sure of eliminating it?
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Post by DarJones on Sept 28, 2020 23:59:28 GMT -5
Aleurone color is from genes in the seed embryo. This is important because the seed coat (caryopsis) is maternal tissue and gets color from the mother plant. The aleurone layer is normally only a few cells deep followed by varying amounts of hard and soft starch. Where it gets interesting is that the aleurone is part of the endosperm and therefore is triploid. It is highly susceptible to "dosing" effects where having 1, 2, or 3 genes for a given color can produce significant changes. From this perspective, it is likely that an ear showing some kernels with aleurone color is coming from the pollen parent and therefore the rest of the seed on that ear probably can be used for breeding. Re-read the first post in this thread for a bit more information about endosperm genetics. Where this is a bit tricky is when the color purple is involved. This color is from an anthocyanin gene and it works a bit different. The best I recall, purple and white are respectively recessive (purple) and dominant (white). This means that you may pull out a white kernel and grow it to find that it produces a large number of purple kernels. Grow the darkest purple kernels and they should produce nearly pure purple ears.
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Post by reed on Sept 29, 2020 9:44:43 GMT -5
Very interesting, yours's is the first info I've had that addresses aleurone color specifically. All of the kernels I planted this year were white and the F1 mother they came from was as well. There were however a lot of different F1 fathers. Last year when the F1 seed was grown parents were selected for lack of aleurone color as well as the other traits I'm looking for. However for added diversity some of those F1 fathers had heritage from a very wide grex where aleurone color was present.
The primary F1 fathers last year were Bronze Beauty Flint with colored pericarp, white endosperm and no aleurone color. Carol Deppe's Cascade Ruby Gold and Cascade Cream Cap, also varied pericarp and no aleurone color and chin marked kernels from some flinty ears out of Lofthouse Harmony Grain Corn, this ear along with the others from the grex are suspect for possibly carrying the aleurone color even though none showed it.
Anyway, that all makes me think it could be a recessive trait and that would make all kernels on those ears suspect. Carol developed her Manna series from Painted mountain so she was able to remove aleurone color from a source that has much more of it than I'm dealing with.
I've selected about 50 ears from from my crop that have lots of the traits I like and out of them only 4 have some kernels with the colored aleurone. Even though there are only a few contaminated kernels on each one I think I will cull those ears.
The mother of the F1 was a white semi dent corn from Mexico called Zapalote Chico. It has a little touch of pink in the pericarp. Crossed with all those others it made lots of mostly pink ears and even some pink chin mark. I'm hoping next year to see more of the red, brown, orange and so on from the Bronze Beauty and the CRG.
The earworm resistance of Zapalote Chico came through in over 1/2 of the total crop. I'm fairly confident it's not just chance because the later sweet corn and the ornamental corn I'm seeing at the local markets are almost universally effected by them.
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