Anasazi beans and off-springs

[galina]

Oct 12, 2013 5:22:06 GMT -5 Andre said:

Hi Galina, Thank you for your detailed answer.

Yes the pink/red beans on the right all come from one plant I will definetely grow out these seeds next year and share.

I think my Anasazi seeds were indeed not pure-breeding. I bought them in a Whole foods store in Florida last spring. These seeds were sold to be eaten so unpure breeding is possible if the grower grows many varieties which is often the case. But I thought beans would not cross this easily.

What is the sowing distance to respect between 2 varieties to maintain pure breeding with beans ?

Ok, could be cross or mutation. Mutation will come true again, the change is fixed and will be the same in the future. With a cross you will see the big F2 generation variation when you sow these beans.

The safe distance is difficult to determine. Beans self-pollinate usually before the flowers open. But wasps can bite into the back of bean flowers to get at pollen and that can result in crossing. Depending on where you live in the world, the crossing danger is hardly a problem or much greater. In the pacific north west of the USA it is hardly a problem, in Southern states much more so. Rather than isolating distances you can ensure absolute seed purity by bagging individual flower trusses with fine mesh little see-through sacs that are tied above a flower truss. Bridal veil or see-through curtain material is used for blossom bags. These are hand stitched, easy to make, to use.and reuse.

Whenever you have OP seeds it is just possible that accidental crossing has taken place. Easy enough discard non-standard beans or to have a bit of fun and follow them up :-)

[blueadzuki]

I'd personally guess the other parent (assuming it is a cross) is more likely a regular kidney bean than the one Galina suggested. If you bought it at a Whole Foods; it was presumably grown on a production farm designed for HUGE amounts of product. They probably would grow several sorts of beans but all of those would be of a fairly small pool of well known, easily sellable varieties, nothing too obscure. the standard red kidney seems to me the one of that group that would be the closest in appearance. The kidney usually is another long seeded bean, but I have seen some strains of commercial kidney where the beans can get that short, flat shape from time to time.
I actually had something similar happen this year happen with my rice beans. When I finally started harvesting a few weeks back, I noticed that most of the beans I was getting back were plain red, the commonest color. I hadn't planted any red on purpose (I'm trying to build up my supply of the other colors) but I had spilled a massive amount of red ones on the spot by accident so having a lot of red plants show up wasn't all that surprising. Plus the spill had occurred on the side where I hadn't really planted as much "on purpose seed" so most of the plants there being volunteers made sense. That is until I started pulling plants up (the beans this year are a hopeless tangle, so as soon as a plant had had all it's pods harvested, I remover it to make access to the others easier) and noticed a lot of those plants have the remnants of peat plugs on the base. That means that they would be the 20 or so seeds I planted indoors as a last ditch effort to get a crop after the critters ate nearly everything earlier in the year. And those were BLUE seeds (that was all I had left at that point). So one of two things happened either red seeds fell into the area of the pots and filled in the spaces as the planted ones died off, or every one of them somehow reverted to red despite rice beans supposedly being fully self pollinating. While it sounds absurd, I actually hope the first is the case. with the amount of seed that was dropped it is possible that could happen, and all of the intentionally planted ones either died or did not produce (with the snarl over there, telling which plants made which pods is all but impossible). The second would be a problem. Something similar to this happened the last time I got a good crop of rice beans about two years ago (I planted all whites creams tans and got about 90% reds back) but I thought that was due to leftovers reds in the soil (rice beans can stay inert down there for almost a decade, and that was before I started soaking them before planting to eliminate "sleepers" and the fact that the line between a tan and a red that isn't all that red is rather slim. But if it is all reversion, that would mean that habit of tossing out all of the red seed I sort through as not being what I am looking for is probably eliminating a lot of what I AM looking for. It would also mean that working out which type of beans will ACTALLY flower up here (which I FINALLY thought I had figured out) would need to be rethought, as by that the blues shouldn't have produced ANYTHING; they're the other type.

[DarJones]

Or you could have a bean like the one I grow that has 3 colors of seed. You can select and plant only the black seed and when harvested will get black, white, and brown. Repeat that for 10 years and you will still get black, white, and brown seed because this is a genetic trait, not random bee pollination.

If you can separate beans by 50 feet in your garden, most of them will be pure seed. To get 100% genetic purity, they should be separated by at least 1.5 miles. Also, the note above about wasps biting into flowers and crossing the flower with other pollen is not typical. It is huge bumblebees or carptenter bees that are big enough to rip the flower open with their forelegs who do most of the bean cross-pollinating. This is related to the way a legume flower is formed with a keel that is kind of like a spring loaded mouse trap. When the flower is opened, the keel pops which flings pollen onto the stigma. A carpenter bee can get into the flower and rub pollen on the stigma to make the cross before pollen inside the flower gets there.

[blueadzuki]

I'm not saying that is impossible, but it seems to me if that was the case there'd be a heck of a lot more blues in the population (in those populations that have them, they probably only make up about 0.001%) Rice beans are closest related to Azuki's so they probably follow adzuki rules of inheritance. Also blue actually as far as I can tell requires more than one gene to be created. there are basically two levels of color to rice beans; base coat and mottling. base can be cream, tan, red, maroon or somewhere in between. Mottling is purplish can be off to total (there's also a pinto but since I have yet to see than and mottling together or over anything but cream I tend to think it's genetically exclusive and probably base coat at that). To get blue the base has to be cream and the mottle purple (at it's extreme upper edge cream can get sort of greenish which is probably what makes the purple look blue). If the plants had given back cream or cream mottle, I would have just assumed the mottle had turned off. If red mottle or black (what happens when you get total over red or any other shade except cream) that the red gene had turned back on. But to get red both genes would have had to reverse their positions at the same time and on ALL of the plants at the same time. That doesn't sound all that likely to me.

[galina]

Oct 12, 2013 11:05:51 GMT -5 blueadzuki said:

I'd personally guess the other parent (assuming it is a cross) is more likely a regular kidney bean than the one Galina suggested..

Blueadzuki,

Actually, I did not suggest any paternity for this bean. I compared it to an existing OP variety and that was for the purpose of illustrating how the bean colour would (or would not) develop and to rule out a potential garden labelling mix-up. With regards to suggestions of paternity, I would agree with you. The answer does most likely lie in other products of the company that sold the Anasazi seeds.

[ottawagardener]

"Cuckoo beans"



They really don't look the same. I'd be curious to see when you plant them out again.

[Andre]

OK to know the end of the story quicker, I sow today 4 seeds indoor (close to a window) so we'll know quite soon what comes next...

F3 beans - October 14th

[blackox]

Interesting. Can't wait to see what they look like.

[Andre]

Well, first information. After soaking the seeds for 24 h, all the red pigmentation is gone and now the white seeds are back to dirt...

[galina]

Oct 16, 2013 8:04:06 GMT -5 Andre said:

Well, first information. After soaking the seeds for 24 h, all the red pigmentation is gone and now the white seeds are back to dirt...

It will be interesting to see what these will do next.

[jayb]

Nice looking beans, I’m looking forward to seeing how your beans turn out. I just wondered though if they F2 seed?

I also had a cross from an Anasazi bean a couple of years ago, the F2 was black, I had quite a few of them, more than one plants worth. Then last year I had some pretty pink beans as well as black from the 'black' . This year looking at the ones I’ve picked so far, they seem to be black, black and white or white and black!


I came across this thread while searching for cross bred Anasazi beans, there seem to be several, as beans go perhaps they are a bit more promiscuous than most!

[jayb]

Picture of Anasazi beans left to right original Anasazi, F2 Black, F3 Pink some with a small white splash and two types F4 seed.


047 by jayb 35, on Flickr

[steev]

I don't know of purity, but tho*e *re very pretty be*n*.

[blackox]

Cool looking beans, jayb. The pink ones remind me of a variety that I've grown from a bag of beans that I've ordered from Rancho Gordo before.

[jayb]

Thanks both, taste good too 

I came across Rancho Gordo web site when I did a search for black and white Anasazi beans - Vaquero they look gorgeous.