cold hardy sweet lupin

[12540dumont]

Here's the lupines in Flower. The USDA lupins came from Washington State. It's only the desert lupins that came from Arizona and New Mexico.

They are all annuals. And all of them should be soaked and leached for a week, with water changes before eating.

If you are allergic to peanuts, stay away from lupins.

Attachments:

[MikeH]

From Fred Stoddard:

Boguslav Kurlovich has indeed developed a low-alkaloid L. polyphyllus (Washington lupin). It has several problems, the main one being that the low-alkaloid mutation is recessive, so if there are any wild (feral, naturalized) lupins of the same species in the area (and there are lots here), bee-mediated cross-pollination will result in bitter offspring. He sent me some seed a couple of years ago but I never found a suitable place to grow it because of the naturalized lupins. It is not non-shattering, that is, for it to be harvestable we need to combine a second recessive mutation that prevents the pods from splitting and casting the seeds to the four winds. The outcrossing could be prevented by combining two more (guess what, recessive) mutations, one for "closed flowers" that keeps the petals from unfurling, so bees can't get in, and one for "autofertility" that allows the pollen to deposit on its own stigma without bee activity, so the flower can pollinate and fertilize itself. Boguslav and his friends have isolated all of these mutants and I understand that he is "pyramiding" them, that is, crossing A x B and C x D, selecting the desirable combination, then crossing AB x CD, but all this is a slow process when he is working as essentially an unfunded retired person in a remote part of the countryside, and he has other, more productive activities like his narrow-leafed lupin developments.

Looks like there's still work to be done. Cross-pollination isn't a problem for me. Shattering is a pain but manageable for small growers. Researchers think commercially so the problems he outlines are truly problems. Looks like it's a non-starter.

[ottawagardener]

I will. Thank you.

[steev]

Holly: I planted the lupins you sent today; having no idea exactly what they are, I put them where I'll be fine if they're perennial, as I hope they are.

[saejtin]

I'm not sure I've posted here before despite being registered for a while. My obsession! is mostly perennial veg (backyardlarder.blogspot.co.uk) and this thread has been very interesting to me. After emailing several of the contacts mentioned before without getting replies I contacted Boguslav Kurlovich on Twitter and LinkedIn. He says he is retired now but still working on breeding stable forms of sweet lupin in his garden. He sent a link to this 2008 paper www.linkedin.com/redir/redirect?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Elupins%2Eorg%2Fpdf%2Fconference%2F2008%2FBreeding%2520and%2520Genetics%2FBoguslav%2520S%2520Kurlovich%2520Fred%2520Stoddard%2520and%2520Peter%2520Earnshaw%2Epdf&urlhash=0GjC
It would make such a great vegetable - bushy, productive and easy to pick (not that I've ever tasted lupin seeds, I should track down some sweet annual ones to taste!).

[MikeH]

GRIN classifies some of its lupins by alkaloid level. There are only two with no alkaloids - www.ars-grin.gov/cgi-bin/npgs/html/close.pl?142002+0. Here's a list of the accessions with the lowest alkaloid content - www.ars-grin.gov/cgi-bin/npgs/html/close.pl?142002+1. I'm growing Kalina and Kiev Mutant this year in isolation cages to increase my seed supply before I start crossing them.

[blueadzuki]

Just to satisfy my curiosity, assuming you get either to flower, please let me know if Kiev's flowers are white (I can see from the provided photos on the GRIN site Kalina's are) I want to see if my Lighter Flowers/Lighter seedcoat=lower alkaloids concept applies here as well.

[MikeH]

Being Lupinus albus, the flowers should be white. If you have lupini, the Mediterranean region snack food, you probably have Lupinus luteus which has a yellow flower. I've grown Tifwhite-78 in the past. It has a small-ish white flower. It has some cold hardiness - www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/proceedings1993/v2-277.html. I'm also growing it this year in an isolation cage to increase my seed supply before I start crossing them.

I'll let you know what colour Kiev Mutant's flowers are.

[blueadzuki]

Yes, L. Albus Flowers are USUSALLY white, but accordig to the web, pink, lavender and even blue ones exist (most likely all among older, less bred populations which are genetically closer to whatever wild L. albus looks like.)