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Post by mountaindweller on Nov 21, 2012 2:50:30 GMT -5
After a while back to the landrace book: I am stupid so first explain me what a landrace is. If one would like to breed a landrace, what varieties would you put together, how would you select? What varieties would you not put together? How many varieties? How many plants to safe seeds from for each vegetable? Which vegetables are especially good for breeding landraces and which are not that great and why? Stories from your breeding progamme what went well what did fail and why? Which garden size is needed for maintaining a landrace for each species (I like lots of tables, but that"s just me). Certainly not as coffe table book, lots of info.
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Post by mountaindweller on Nov 21, 2012 3:06:29 GMT -5
Something else:
I have a practical problem, and would like to have a landrace of corn for flour etc, which must be simply bred from the stuff which is available here. How would I start?
Or a gardener would like to grow two kinds of tomato landraces, one for eating fresh the other for cooking, how would one start?
Or you want fruit as soon in the year as possible, like melons or uchuvas (physalis, forgot name), how would you start?
I would like to have as many practical examples as possible, to see how I could handle a problem.The theoretical stuff is important but you need to tell the how to's for dummies too.
BTW do not forget to translate Fahrenheits and feet (especially square feet) into metric units, books are sold worldwide today and lots of Aussie customers are of Chinese origin, some European as well.
I would not write too much general about food security as people reading this book know what's on, but history of landraces that can't be read elsewhere. Generally, I find it very important not to repeat stuff which is written elsewhere very often, unless this knowledge is of practical importance, i.e if you write about landraces you don't tell the readers about Peak oil or how to grow beans, but that's just my opinion. For me you write as much of your own unique knowledge, the knowledge what only you have.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Nov 21, 2012 15:43:16 GMT -5
Personally I think there should be a portion of page ( like within the copyright information) with the user names who collaborated with you on this. I already wrote that. It ended up being a who's who of the cutting edge of food security via landrace plant breeding. I have hundreds of collaborators, and to write it properly I'd need to include the collaborators of my collaborators. By the time I do that, my plant breeding network is tremendously huge. It would be a stand alone book. The seeds in my landraces include descendants from every major seed bank, and many smaller regional or local seed banks, and each seed bank has anywhere from 1 to thousands of people to credit for collecting, preserving, and sharing the seed. The seeds in my landraces include descendants from every major seed company worldwide, and many of the smaller national and regional seed companies. Hundreds of individuals have sent me seeds for inclusion in my landraces... Other hundreds of people have sent me photos and progress reports about how my plants grew in their gardens. Other hundreds have helped my clarify my thinking, or offered proof reading services. People might badmouth the huge mega-corporation seed companies, but the only thing they have going for them is their media image... My collaboration network is larger than all of the mega-seed companies put together. |
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Post by ilex on Nov 22, 2012 4:25:04 GMT -5
Something else: I have a practical problem, and would like to have a landrace of corn for flour etc, which must be simply bred from the stuff which is available here. How would I start? You would plant those varieties together and let them cross, save the seed and let the population evolve. As oposed to traditional breeding, you want to maintain diversity. After that, it depends a lot on which goals you have. Usually, you want plants that cross somewhat, and that share something. For example, you could do a pepper landrace for the oven. You usually don't want hot peppers here, or frying ones, just thick wall, easy to peel ones. Their shape, size or color ... who cares. |
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Post by templeton on Nov 22, 2012 7:36:55 GMT -5
Mountain dweller, I was presuming your quesitons were rhetorical, posed for the purpose of illustrating the sorts of things that would be useful for you in such a book? If you would really like the answers, check out the threads terracotta has highlighted. By way of introduction, where you start is in part determined by where you would like to finish up, and why you would like a landrace in the first place. The material you start with is driven by a few factors - the sorts of material that is actually available (quite limited for flour corn, in australia I would imagine, but then I haven't really looked that hard). It will also be driven by your circumstances - choose as much diversity as you can, but focus a bit on where you are. Stuff actually has to survive to the fertile stage to add any genetic material to your lines. In plant breeding, a bit of thought beforehand goes a long way. By the same token, if you don't have a go, you will never know. You will make mistakes, but they just make you smarter next season.  T |
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Nov 22, 2012 11:16:59 GMT -5
Something else: I have a practical problem, and would like to have a landrace of corn for flour etc, which must be simply bred from the stuff which is available here. As a practical matter, "here" should be defined to mean planet Earth... Prohibition doesn't work. Seeds travel quickly and easily across arbitrary borders. |
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Post by oxbowfarm on Nov 22, 2012 11:43:48 GMT -5
It is also appropriate to baby some rare seeds along in hopes that they will incorporate some of their genetics to your landrace. Kind of like what Joseph and bjarkarlin are doing trying to add Peruvian Morado genetics to their corn landraces, but you only do that for a while to incorporate the genes. Clearly a corn like a Morado has a lot of genetics that are maladaptive for growing in Paradise, Utah or Tennessee. Once crossed in, the natural selection pressures of your actual growing climate will rapidly eliminate the maladaptive genes.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Nov 22, 2012 12:08:15 GMT -5
Once crossed in, the natural selection pressures of your actual growing climate will rapidly eliminate the maladaptive genes. Often when I start a landrace with a new species, I am amazed at the rapid acclimatization to my environment. It's more obvious with the mostly out-crossers than with the mostly selfers. The first year is often a disaster, even with crops that are commonly grown around here. The second year is usually a good year. But that third year is a joy. Then there are the species that are so far outside their comfort zone in my garden that I may never successfully grow them in the field, regardless of how much genetic diversity I plant: Oranges, avocado, turmeric, and ginger. Other crops I may end up classifying that way are: Okra, Argyrosperma squash, and Andean corn. |
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Post by terracotta on Nov 22, 2012 21:56:39 GMT -5
Personally I like the term adaptivar because you are growing out a variety of cultivars and determining which ones will survive to produce fruit. Then you hybridize the ones that grow the best to form a new variety essentially a adapted variety to that climate. Climate and environmental factors on plants should be one factor covered. One thing that is hardly covered is thinning out, how would you do it? you could write a book based on this: alanbishop.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=banter&action=display&thread=5770 |
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Post by terracotta on Nov 22, 2012 22:13:16 GMT -5
What is your belief on plant variety protection(PVP) and plant patents? Are heirlooms superior to current varieties? What's your thoughts on crossing produce with wild relatives?
Here is a scenario you will probably encounter.
I would like to make cream of Saskatchewan bigger and have a thicker rind
but keep the seed pure. So I use a chromosome doubling agent converting it
from diploid(2N) to tetraploid (4N) which will give me the desired result
without hybridizing it with anything. This new strain will breed true and
be just like the diploid variety only bigger.
The question is since if they a tetraploid does cross with a diploid they do not give true seed (creating a
sterile triploid 3N) is it considered a pure strain? or does it fall into the same category as cytoplasmic male sterility?
Are artificial polyploids considered GMOs?
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Nov 23, 2012 0:49:55 GMT -5
I have no opinion about PVP or plant patents. Those are political issues. I don't have anything to do with politics or with the political process. Doesn't matter to me in any way.
Heirlooms tend to grow poorly in my garden. Many current varieties produced in Oregon tend to grow poorly in my garden. (Oregon is at the opposite end of the dampness spectrum from my garden.) Current mega-ag varieties from other areas grow well or poorly. Really no way to predict ahead of time which varieties will do well in any particular year.
I am happy with a small percentage of wild pollen getting into my crops. I figure that it makes the population stronger.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Nov 23, 2012 20:11:27 GMT -5
So only natural pollination? I love inter-landrace hybrids. The best sweet corn I ever grew was an F1 hybrid between a landrace and a commercial inbred. It had the best of both worlds: The reliability of the landrace, and the extra sweetness of the inbred. Intentional hybrids can be especially useful in landrace development involving crops that are mostly-selfers: Gives you more diversity to select from, so results are quicker, especially if you are working with smallish populations. |
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Post by oxbowfarm on Nov 23, 2012 20:56:53 GMT -5
The wonderful thing about Homegrown Goodness is that it is a rare place where folks can come together and discuss every possible technique related to plant breeding.
I am becoming more and more fascinated by the landrace plant breeding concept, but I doubt I will ever take it as far as Joseph has. There are species and/or varieties that I prefer to keep as pure lines, or it is just easier to do so for me in my climate. Joseph has such an unusual climate that he is finding the landraces beneficial for almost everything.
As far as PVP and plant patents go, I am philosophically opposed to them as immoral. They are also largely irrelevant for most of us at the scale in which we work. That also goes for GMO patents for the most part. Especially given that almost all the current genetic modifications are for herbicide resistances that are basically useless for people like me.
In my opinion, there is nothing about any "heirloom" that makes it in any way superior or inferior to a hybrid. Varieties should be judged on the merits of their phenotype as grown in your own garden, not whether they are hybrid or how old the variety is or how quaint the story associated with them. Some heirlooms are very fine indeed, some are dogs.
I personally get frustrated with the Seed Savers Exchange, even though I am a listed member, because of all the seed saving energy that gets wasted on tomatoes. Nearly a quarter of the yearbook every year is tomatoes, most of which are dogs and many of which are crossed up. You cannot tell me that someone is bagging blossoms when they are listing hundreds of varieties.
Really interesting techniques that I have tried or want to try after becoming active with this forum - bud pollination of brassicas ( thank you Tim Peters), rooting brassica cuttings, interspecific crosses, landrace plant breeding, tissue culture, Michurin style mentor pollinations for wide crosses, hand pollination of Phaseolus vulgaris, hormone induced flowering, seeking true seed from sunchokes, potatoes, potato onions, and garlic. Interspecies grafting,
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Nov 23, 2012 22:32:05 GMT -5
Too funny. I'm wanting to grow landrace Maxima seed from Oxbow farm.
Landraces don't work for every crop for me either. Landrace turnips for example were a complete and total failure: Due to social reasons. Doesn't matter how well they might have done biologically. I'll grow plain old "purple-top white-globe" for quite some time.
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Post by mountaindweller on Nov 26, 2012 5:11:06 GMT -5
The questions were indeed for what I would like to see in the landrace book. It would be great having all the information together in one book. I have to correct myself: instead of "what is a landrace" (which only takes 3 sentences to explain) I would like to read about the advantages and disadvantages of a landrace vs usual varieties. And in which crops it is advantageous and when are usual varieties better.
And then what happens if all these together planted varieties cross, don't you get some muddy unpalatable mixture? (again, for the book)
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