Red pak choy (Bok choy)

[rowan]

I find myself growing a lot of red vegetables this year for some reason and I just came home with a couple of punnets of red F1 pak choy which I have not seen before. I would like to breed this into an open pollinated type.

A couple of questions:
1, which plants or varieties might the red coloration come from?
2, is there anything I need to watch out for or know as I try breeding from these plants?

Cheers,
Rowan

[oxbowfarm]

Some of the newer hybrid brassicas are male sterile, this may or may not be the case for the red choi. I'm growing it too. It looks like they've backcrossed it to a mustard, the red color is very similar to Red Giant type mustard with the red only intense on the upper surface of the leaf and the underside of the leaf is bright green with red veining. I'd self it and see what happens, maybe have another plant or two flowering with another pac choi in case of sterility?

I've had a thought that this might be a fun one to cross with Senposai and try and get a red version. I can't achieve this this year unfortunately because I cooked all my overwintered Senposai in the cold frame. DOH!

[templeton]

Stop giving me ideas - a red senposai.....hmmmmmm.
Rowan, hopefully Raymondo will chime in - he's working on some green leafy things. Have you looked at Carol Deppe's discussion of mustard breeding?
And check that these aren't already a stable hybrid. They might not be F1s.
Deppe's book reviewed here <http://books.google.com.au/books/about/Breed_Your_Own_Vegetable_Varieties.html?id=sNgMAAAACAAJ&redir_esc=y>
T

[rowan]

Yes I have her book - I love it. I didn't spend much time on those parts related to brassicas as up till now I hadn't had much of an interest in breeding them. My main interest is melons.

I will have to get my book back from my sister I think.

I am prepared to work with any male sterility issue but I really am hoping it is really stable and able to be open pollinated. That would make growing it really simple

[raymondo]

I would do as oxbow has suggested, if you have or can get enough of the red choi. Plant some (most) on its own to self/sib and a few plants among some standard choi in the event that it's male-sterile. In fact, I'd be very tempted to mix it all up anyway because if it's not really a hybrid you run the risk of starting off with a too small gene pool. The colouring may vanish in the offspring of this mix but should pop up again in later generations.
My cabbage/collard/kale mix is quite diverse so I haven't worried overly about plant numbers. When I grow a specific variety for seed though I grow a minimum of 40 plants, preferably closer to 60 to allow for losses and culling.

[oxbowfarm]

Here are a few pics of some of our pac choi.
The red is the hybrid "Red Choi" the green is "Shuko" from Fedco which is open pollinated AFAIK.



It may be that the red choi isn't bred with cytoplasmic male sterility because they are pretty variable in phenotype. The intensity of the red varies from plant to plant. There are also some much more mustardy/turnipy off types with spiny hairs on the leaf and petiole surface. Here's one of them, I hope the hairs show on the pic. You can also sort of see that the petioles aren't nearly as fat and flared as a proper pac choi.


Heres another pic of the "Shuko". It is definitely a more vigorous grower than the red. Plants are about 40% bigger when planted on the same day. Maybe more efficient photosynthesis without the extra red pigment?

[raymondo]

They look good enough to eat! I especially like the green-stemmed pak choi.

[12540dumont]

Those really are lovely Oxbow. You are a wonderful farmer. Leaf hoppers always chew holes in mine.

[bunkie]

great looking plants oxbow! we're doing a lot of red this year too...

[oxbowfarm]

Holly, its still April! In a month or so the flea beetles will hatch and start shredding all the brassicas, I actually have a mini-hatch going on in one of the other hoophouses, stuff should still be saleable though.

[ottawagardener]

Beautiful and I was just thinking there aren't any flea beetles holes - how nice! We had some flea beetles already up with some unseasonably warm weather. They seem to be hanging out on the upland cress.

[oxbowfarm]

Just a market update, yesterday my customers overwhelmingly prefered the Shuko (green) pac choi to the Red. This planting was 50/50 green to red, in the future I'll probably do something like 80/20. I definitely like having the red for the color contrast on the display, but I really didn't start selling much red until all the green was gone. Some folks also decided against the red due to its smaller size, but some of them have started stretching/bolting so I figure they ain't getting any bigger under these conditions, time to harvest. At that ratio I figure I could keep the red nicely stocked on the display and provide everyone with the pac choi they really like.

[steev]

Have you an opinion about any taste difference between the two colors, or is people's preference just cosmetic?

[oxbowfarm]

I'd say the red is a little stronger tasting. I'm pretty sure it was a cosmetic thing, though. I've never sold the red before, and I'm fairly certain no one else had at my market.

[steev]

Sounds right; people are so conservative about food. Personally, I would suppose the red is more nutritionally valuable, and stronger-flavored is also good; I think bok choy is rather subtle compared to my usual fare.