Bothered by Cytoplasmic Male Sterility

[Joseph Lofthouse]

So here I am fussing over something rather than going to work... Course it's raining, and who wants to be working in the garden while it's raining and just a degree or two above snow temperatures?

[Stepping up onto soapbox]

I am feeling bothered by so many seed companies advertizing themselves as bio-diverse, earth-friendly, organic, preservationist, etc, who are offering varieties for sale that are male sterile. I suppose that technically there is nothing non-organic about offering seeds for sale that cannot reproduce themselves. I just wonder if they have even thought about the contradictions?

Monsanto's terminator gene sure raised a ruckus a few years ago, and yet these seed companies are essentially doing the same thing, and it's just business as usual in the commercial seed industry. Even the small regional seed companies end up selling male sterile hybrids.

Shudder.

[Stepping down]

[12540dumont]

They will end up starving us all.

So what to do? The male sterility is only carried maternally. Kind of like baldness. So, find a new mother and breed it to your male. Of course, she has to be a sister. What crop are you working with that you are having trouble with?

See, it's a plot to prevent us from saving seeds. And all this time you thought I was paranoid.

[mnjrutherford]

When EOTWAKI hits, these will be among the tools nature will use to do her part in population "restructuring". My initial gut reaction is the same. On the other hand, what can you really do to correct the situation?

Personally, I think that the multilevel conversations that are occurring on this forum and others like it will improve the chances of every single person who reads them. Of course, not everyone can or will read such things. What can you really do to correct that situation?

Thought about it?

Got an answer?

Neither do I. =o(

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Oct 6, 2011 13:01:08 GMT -5 12540dumont said:

So what to do? The male sterility is only carried maternally. Kind of like baldness. So, find a new mother and breed it to your male. Of course, she has to be a sister. What crop are you working with that you are having trouble with?

I'm irritated as hell that 70% of my carrot seed crop is male sterile. It will only take me a year to correct that problem, it's easy to see at a glance, even from 5 feet away which plants are male sterile. But that's just a hint of the real problem... What other species am I growing that are almost entirely male sterile?

I think I'm safe on spinach....

I've normally used Indian corns as the mothers in my sweet corn breeding program, so they are probably OK, but I have many lines of corn that used commercial sweet corn as the mothers... Will they have to be tossed? How do I even identify male sterility in a corn plant? What will Astronomy Domine look like after I eliminate any male sterility that might exist in it?

I think I'll discard 99% of my potato landrace, and start over; using only seeds that are male fertile.

And onions. I bet there's a mess there.

And how about my cucumbers, and cantaloupes, and watermelons, and butternuts?

If I ever use a hybrid in any breeding program, don't I have to worry about whether or not I am introducing male sterility into my population?

I guess it's my own fault for being unaware, and incorporating male sterility into my crops, but OH MY GOSH!!!! There is more at stake in saving my own seeds than I ever knew. So many dangers out there hidden in plain sight to anyone that takes the time to notice, "huh, there ain't no anthers on that carrot blossom".

[castanea]

I am totally sympathetic. Pollen free sunflowers have been my pet issue lately. Lots of interesting breeding work is being done with sunflowers but much of it is for pollen free flowers. What a waste.

"advertizing themselves as bio-diverse, earth-friendly, organic, preservationist"

Yep and it's just advertsing, the latest buzz words. Most seed comanies have no idea what bio-diverse or those other words mean and they wouldn't care if they did.

[steev]

Holly, I've NEVER thought you paranoid, but then, I never run with the crowd.

On the subject of male sterility in seed companies' offerings: how is it paranoid to suppose some company's business model would include selling products that must be bought over and over? The cheesiest drug pusher can see the benefits of that way of doing business.

As for what's at stake in saving one's own seed, just consider the rapidity with which one can adapt a crop to his own environment and the need to do that as climate changes in whatever direction.

[canadamike]

Cytoplasmic male sterility can be both a blessing or a curse.

»Right now, it is only a curse, because although, as an exemple, alfalfa seed company will clame LOADS OF BIODIVERSITY, the proof being in the number of cultivars, the truth is that there are around a dozen or so ''mammas'' to all these cultivars, male cytoplasmic sterility being so rare in in full truth.

But, at a smaller scale, it could also be a blessing, if the cultivar was highly desirable to create some new ones easily.

In a perfect world, it would all play out good. But we all know the actual world is perfect in a very imperfect way...

In reality, this thing that could be a TOOL becomes a weapon to control a trade. The russians have better water tolerant alfalfa...we use fungicides...

I have been trying to locate a source of gameticide to cross perennial wheat with great french cultivars, especially the ones that taste like gingerbread ( yes, they do exist, and Tom and I had gingerbread tasting bread in Morlaix) .

Does anyone has a clue on how to purchse gameticides?

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Oct 6, 2011 19:54:35 GMT -5 canadamike said:

Does anyone has a clue on how to purchse gameticides?

Toluidine Blue is currently for sale on eBay.
2,4-D can be purchased at almost any garden store.
Surf excel is a popular detergent in India and Pakistan.

Gibberillins are readily purchased over the counter, and are among the most commonly used gametocides. Typical concentration applied is around 100 ppm.

Ha! Who'd ever guess from my current lifestyle that I spent 20 years working as a chemist? But then, those that know my life history and what I was working on would say that I am currently farming BECAUSE I spent 20 years as a chemist.

[keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.)]

Joseph what do pollen-less carrot flowers actually look like? Is it easy to identify?

We planted some carrots last year from a really old seed packet we had. If i had to guess I'd say the packet was probably 8-10 years old. I'm not even sure if it had a name other than "carrot". We also planted a row of some white carrots. This year they made it to bloom, and the wild bees went crazy with them! The flowers remind me of dill, and since i find dill to be incredible uninteresting i didn't really look that closely at the carrot flowers. I'm fairly sure that they all produced lots of seeds though, so i doubt if there was any male sterility in the ones we planted. I should have saved some of the seeds, but i didn't. I got kind of annoyed when they started sticking to my clothes and under my shirt. It looks like many of them may have already reseeded themselves though, which is really cool. We have a few carrot greens peeking out of the soil now.

If I ever use a hybrid in any breeding program, don't I have to worry about whether or not I am introducing male sterility into my population?

I would think that that could be a possibility. And what about commercial sources of corn seed? I would think that at some point the risk of getting GM contamination would also be a problem. That's why my breeding work with corn is going slower than other peoples projects. I'm being a little cautious just to be on the safe side.

But i doubt if other plants like watermelon or onions would be affected at all. It doesn't hurt to be cautious, but i'm not sure it's as bad as you make it sound. But, then again i'm a little new to the whole sterility thing, and i haven't really done any research into it.

The pollenless sunflowers really has be pissed off though. I really want a large headed red sunflower. But it looks like they all are pollenless. I still may go for it anyway, but it's not something i'm thrilled about.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Oct 6, 2011 22:24:03 GMT -5 keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) said:

Joseph what do pollen-less carrot flowers actually look like? Is it easy to identify?

But i doubt if other plants like watermelon or onions would be affected at all. It doesn't hurt to be cautious, but i'm not sure it's as bad as you make it sound.

In my garden, male sterile carrot flowers are easy to identify at a distance... They don't have anthers. Anthers hanging off the ends of filaments make male fertile flower clusters look fuzzy. Male sterile flowers don't have anthers, and the filaments are mostly missing, so the flower looks smoother. Something like this:



There is another type of male sterility in carrots called "brown anthers", but I haven't found that in my garden.

I mentioned onions because my preliminary research indicated that nearly all commercial onions are male sterile. Fortunately with onions it's a cytoplasmic/nuclear interaction that induces sterility so it can be eliminated by introducing the appropriate nuclear genes into a population.

As of 1999 cytoplasmic male sterility had not been reported for cucurbits. There is a known recessive nuclear gene for sterility in watermelon. It is linked with a distinctive leaf shape in the seedlings, so it would be easy to weed out.

Nuclear sterility doesn't bother me near as much as cytoplasmic sterility.

I sense a business opportunity... Grow out peoples seed, and spray it with herbicides, and feed it to caterpillars, to see if it's acting like a GMO. Inspect the pollen to see if it's normal... And after all that testing certify it "No GMO or Male-Sterility detected". I need a better name for my certification though. Something short and catchy.

[12540dumont]

Last night I dreamed 2 carrots in a fertility clinic where the female was complaining about Cytoplasmic Sterility and how she'd never have a family.

Back to corn shelling.

[whocares]

CMS is a dead end if not used with restorer genes. It occurs naturally in things like carrot, onion and radish. The real sickener is Protoplast Fusion CMS hybrids. This is Genetic Engineering of our vegetable varieties. It has been going on seruptitiously for sometime now. GM veg seed has been on sale in the US and EU and has entered the food chain thanks to various dodgy companies. Mostly cabbage family stuff.
WhOcArES?

[jonnyyuma]

Hello
CMS has nothing to do with seed saving per se. It has a lot to do with seed companies wanting to produce cheaper F1 seed that has a high level of hybridity. If you think about the protection of the companies genetics is protected in the F1, by PVP, and in some cases patent; using CMS to only make it so people can't breed with your material or save seed is secondary to lowering costs of F1 seed production. CMS is a hinderance to seed companies because if your competition develops a successful F1 you can't break it down for née breeding material for your program, similar to what Joseph is mentioning. I still believe this is secondary to the benefit of cheaper production costs.
CMS is popular in broccoli, radish, cabbage, onion, carrot and cauliflower (all crops that historically struggled with hybridity). Nothing to worry about in cucurbit and most corn lines ( there was a heterotic group in corny that was CMS but also susceptible to a disease and was mostly phased out in favor of de tasseling). There are 5 sources of genetic male sterility in melon and 3, that I know of, in watermelon. I believe they are all recessive.
To Whocares point,CMS can't be used in certified organic productions.
Canada Ike has a point about Alfalfa to, but depends on which company you are talking about. I know UC Davis alfalfa program is based on population improvment/population breeding

Thanks
Jonny

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Here's a photo of what a male-fertile carrot blossom looks like. The pollen-bearing anthers are clearly visible hanging away from the blossom on long filaments:



And a photo of a male-sterile blossom. There are no anthers to be seen. Some blossoms might have a filament sticking up, but if they do, there are no anthers on them.



Even from a distance it is easy to identify the male fertile blossoms.



For what it's worth, as you may be able to tell from the photos, I found my good camera: Exactly one year after I lost it. It was in a clearly visible place that I have passed hundreds of times since it was misplaced. Guess all I had to do was start harvesting the popcorn.

[mnjrutherford]

That's amazing.... They actually look ... well... "male". So.... are the female flowers in the same flower head? Will you get any viable seed from that head at all?

How concerned should we be? What can we do to battle back?