True Garlic Seed

[12540dumont]

www.garlicfarm.ca/article-garlic-seeds.htm

This is an article by Rina Kamenetsky about getting garlic to set true flowers to get true seeds.

I am going to write to the USDA and see if I can get help identifying which cloves in Grins are likely candidates.

I have also ordered bulbils to experiment with.

All of this is to try and get around the rust problem. I currently have one whole field in quarantine hoping to save it for true seeds. I have tried writing to both Rina and Maria. Neither answered my query.

Any of you working on this? Suggestions?

[raymondo]

I tried to encourage seed set on last year's garlic by removing bulbils. It certainly improved flowering but I got no seed, viable or otherwise. I only tried it on a few plants, all of the same variety.

[canadamike]

I had the pleasure to work with the onion curator of »Grin-USA and the lady is a true passionate, like the one taking care of melons.

With the help of friends here to whom I asked for help, we provided Grin with allium ursinus and victorialis, if my memory is right. Ursinum for sure, coming from Lieven I think, and a few others, but I might be wrong.

ANYWAY, I have grown all ''true seed producing'' alliums available in Grin, and none gave me any seeds.

Since I know for a fact that in some weird years, alliums like shallots, the true ones, are not supposed to produce seeds and have in special circumstances (meaning unusual summers) for some friends here, I tend to think environmental conditions play a huge role in the hormonal chemistry of these plants, allowing , in exceptional circumstances, the production of true seeds from plants not supposed to do so.

These garlics might very well be having a wider set of ''perfect circumstances''that permit the production of true seeds, but it seems my northern climate is not part of the equation.

I have no doubt they do produce true seeds elsewhere, in some perfect environmental conditions, but the Ottawa valley is not. We even had the hottest JUly in history last year, and notting different happened.

I feel the genetic make up of those few garlics that can produce seeds needs positive environmental conditions to produce them in a natural set up.

[mnjrutherford]

I'm to new in the process to help you out much at this point. I have saved all my bulbils though. I can send you some if you would like. Drawback is that I did not maintain which garlics they came from.

[12540dumont]

Yesterday I received a note from Dr. Maria Jenderek who did some of the preliminary research on true garlic seed. She sent me the Grin #s that she worked with.

I'm working with Barbara at Pullman. She's very very nice. She is also working to figure out what Rina took out of Grin to work with.

Mike, if you want to PM the Grin #'s you worked with, well, it'll be a triple check. Thanks!

Rina did not even answer my e-mail.

I have also ordered bulbils from Canada and I'd love to have any that anyone sends.

I'm trialing onions, leeks and garlics this fall. (Alan Bishop if you are out there, I found a couple of torpedo onions in my seed fridge and mailed them out yesterday.) Anyway, anyone who sends onion or seed or garlic bulbils will receive seeds/bulbils in return at the end of the trial.

And of course, I will send some to Dan Grunt for the great seed bank in the North.

From the Spring trial I will say, the Mill Creek Onion looks really good. Photos later. Must pull peas to save seed.

[raymondo]

Good luck with the garlic. It would be wonderful to see true garlic seed out and about and not just read about them in journals. I will keep trying to generate true seed but I doubt that I grow enough. It seems you need to be growing quite a lot to begin with.

[12540dumont]

I'll keep track of what I do with the garlic and I'll let you know. If I get any seed, it's my intention to spread it around.

Here's a photo of the Mill Creek. Planted Jan 16. Transplanted Feb 12. Harvested July 14. That's pretty darn quick for an onion from seed!

I got these seeds from Bountiful Gardens in Willits. They started to bulb up without throwing out sending up a flower. In the row right next to them is a Valencia, coming on soon.

Attachments:

[12540dumont]

And one more photo of Mill Creek, fresh out of the garden. There's a Valencia in the woodpile. This is a nice onion. I also put in Red Torpedos, Giant Zittau, Cippolini, Alisa Craig, Walla Wallas, and the Valencias. Of course the Walla has come and gone. They don't keep, so I already pushed them out the door.

Attachments:

[cesarz]

Hi Holly,

Curious enough, I noticed complete flowers (with stamens and pistil) together with the bulbils on my rocombole garlic last season and thought about why we don't produce true garlic seeds. Wonder if they are self-sterile? Does anybody know?

Cheers,
Cesar

PS shall we call them TGS just like the potatoes' TPS

[12540dumont]

The only way you can find out if they are sterile, is to plant them.

From the studies, only a small percentage restart, but the ones that do are a miracle for you and the garlic.

[caledonian]

I've read that garlics can be encouraged to flower, while simultaneously discouraged from diverting resources to bulb formation, manipulating the levels of light they are exposed to at critical periods. Supposedly this is a relatively effective way to maximize the fertility of the flowers.

I'll see if I can locate the article I remember.

(edit to add) One semi-reliable way to determine if the garlic's flowers are fertile is to look at the color of the pollen on the stamens. Fertile pollen in garlic tends to be purple-blue, while infertile strains (if they produce pollen at all) are yellowish.

Pollen sterility is one of the more common mutations in cultivated garlic, unfortunately.

[atash]

Interesting discussion.

Garlic's sterility is probably not natural, but an artifact of mutations and perhaps buildup of viruses from being propagated vegetatively too many times. This is the bane of a great many crops including and especially anything with dividing bulbs or tubers or rhizomes that can be propagated in lieu of seeds.

Its wild and presumably fertile ancestor is not known with certainty. There are several wild species including Allium tuncelianum, Allium ampeloprasum (a leek-like plant apparently), and Allium scorodoprasum that seem to be related to it. It might be a hybrid as many domesticated plants are.

A. tuncelianum smells mildly of garlic and sets fertile seed. In habitat it is often gathered wild as a substitute for garlic.

I believe it has the same chromosome count as domesticated garlic. It could probably serve as a pollen donor.

I'm still waiting for day-neutral garlics that can be grown in the tropics. There are two on the market in Australia but I can't find them. Garlic can be grown in the tropics but the bulbs end up small for lack of day-length triggers to encourage bulb development.

I would also like seed-fertile garlic in part because domesticated garlic is too slow to propagate as-is. And I suspect seed-grown plants would be more vigorous.

[caledonian]

Oct 3, 2011 11:32:42 GMT -5 atash said:

I would also like seed-fertile garlic in part because domesticated garlic is too slow to propagate as-is. And I suspect seed-grown plants would be more vigorous.

AFAIK, they are - but they're also not all that much like domesticated garlic, which was why the commercial projects to produce 'em were discarded.

People tried to patent a very basic 'system' for producing true seed in garlic; the basic procedure can be found here.

There's also an interesting article on an Italian line that was fertile in JSTOR here.

[oxbowfarm]

Neither of those links are working for me.

[raymondo]

I found an article on JSTOR about an Italian tetraploid garlic line that was found to be fertile. Is that the one Caledonian?