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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Feb 10, 2014 14:14:13 GMT -5
Any opinions about the Seed to Seed cribbed notes about number of plants to save from year to year? I am not growing the types of crops that "Seed to Seed" and other typical seed saving guides were written about. They were written for highly inbred crops with little variation from plant to plant. There is more biodiversity in a single cob of Astronomy Domine than in a 1000 acre field of commercial sweet corn. If a crop starts out with every seed being essentially a clone of every other seed in the packet then as long as it's grown in isolation they will pretty much continue to be bottle-necked clones.) Those highly bottle-necked crops are the type of crops that "Seed to Seed" is dealing with. Where things get interesting for me is that every seed of a crop like Astronomy Domine sweet corn is a new variety. Some family groups do better in some years than others. The main variations in growing conditions that I have noticed are hotter/colder, dryer/wetter, soil varies with crop rotation, bugs vary, length of season varies, weeding varies. Traits for dealing with hotter weather don't disappear in a single growing season. It would take many consecutive years of cold weather selection to totally eliminate them. But that's not how my weather works. I get variations around a theme. A wetter year, a couple dryer years, switching around. So the adaptations for various growing conditions stick around because there was enough diversity to start with to deal with them. The first year or two that I plant warm weather crops in my garden they experience a severe bottleneck. Failure rates of 75% to 99% are typical. I normally don't replant the varieties that failed to survive. I mostly let bygones be bygones. But once I get a variety that works for me, I routinely plant 2 and 3 year old seed along with last year's seed. This prevents one highly unusual growing season from severely skewing the population. The other thing that I do which is not considered in typical seed saving guides, is that I am constantly introducing new genetics into my crops by trialing new varieties and adding the resulting seeds (or perhaps only pollen) to my crops. That is another method of maintaining biodiversity while planting fewer numbers of plants. I also swap seeds with my neighbors. They had different bottlenecks than I did, so that helps broaden the diversity. I also watch carefully for natural hybrids to show up within the highly inbreeding crops. Then I give the hybrids and their offspring a special place in the garden. This greatly expands the biodiversity of my peas and beans. Another method I use to maintain biodiversity when dealing with limited amounts of parents is to save seeds from most every parent. If I am working on preserving a historical variety then seed should be saved from every parent regardless of how poorly it does. If I am working towards local adaptation then I'll be more selective by saving seed only from the more productive parents. In the early years of a local adaptation project I typically replant seed from anything that managed to produce seeds. That allows the poor performs another chance to cross with those that did much better. Poor being a relative term since they did better than the 90% that failed to even produce seed. |
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Feb 10, 2014 14:23:15 GMT -5
My method of eliminating the bitterness gene would be to go into the patch and taste every fruit in the patch... If any plant produces a bitter fruit then chop out the whole plant. If any plant hasn't yet produced fruit then chop it out. At this point all the plants in the field are producing only sweet fruits. Remove every fruit from the field. For the rest of the growing season only sweet fruits (and sweet pollen) will be produced.
Of course this method requires a sufficiently long growing season that the first flush of fruits can be tasted and discarded. And the plants have to be planted far enough apart to be able to identify each plant as an individual. And it requires bitterness to be a dominant trait.
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Post by gilbert on Feb 10, 2014 14:29:39 GMT -5
I think I agree with your method of preventing unwanted outside contamination in most landraces; but what about corn? SSE did an experiment this past year. Here is the link blog.seedsavers.org/preventing-gmo-contamination-in-your-open-pollinated-corn Now, the small amount of crossing they got would not be a problem; except for GMOs. Or do you only grow corn whose visible seed genetics are recessive to GMO field corns, as in this experiment? |
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Post by richardw on Feb 10, 2014 16:33:37 GMT -5
Accordingly to your graph Joseph i may well be over doing my control work on Queen Anne's Lace keeping it outside the distance of 3km of my garden,but its because our local council unknowingly spread the seed while mowing the road sides,so far in thirteen years the closest plant that ive grubbed out which was a couple of days ago was about 2km away,even after all that time i still get the odd white root and there's been zero contamination.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Feb 10, 2014 17:33:39 GMT -5
What my graph doesn't show is the low level contamination... The one in a thousand events, the one in a million events, which would add up if there were millions of Queen Anne's Lace in the vicinity. I tried to do the math on that one, but it got too complex too quick. It would have required Calculus, and my grades in Calculus were a solid D, so I repressed any knowledge of Calculus before I even left school.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Feb 10, 2014 18:22:00 GMT -5
200 plants X 2 cobs per plant X 300 kernels per cob = 120,000 kernels of local corn. 6 kernels that were pollinated by the GMO corn a half mile away ==> 1 in 20,000 chance of being GMO. I don't run my life based on the possibility that such a rare and unusual situation might occur. The article says, "This genetic contamination represents less than 0.1% of the population in this generation". True enough, but the real number is less than 0.005% of the population. The article goes on to say: "... for the purposes of saving seed, any GMO contamination is unacceptable because the contamination will increase exponentially in each successive generation." To which I reply GMO crops are not magical. The contamination does not increase exponentially. In the following years it will still be limited to 0.005% of the population. GMO crops reproduce at the same rate as non-GMO crops. Without selection pressure one way or the other the genes contributed by the GMO pollen will continue at their present rate of 1 in 40,000. If 200 randomly selected seeds are replanted each year, then there is only a 1 in 100 chance that one of the GMO seeds will end up in next year's planting. So that's a 99% chance of eliminating the GMO just by replanting the seeds. There is the trick that some farmers tried with canola... Let the fields get contaminated with roundup-ready pollen, and grow out the seed, and spray it with Glyphosate to kill all of the non-contaminated plants. Then the survivors were totally GMO and the farmers thought they wouldn't have to pay patent royalties. Ha! The last of the roundup-ready patents expire this year... So better luck next time. I grow popcorn and sweet corn. It would be easy for me to tell if either one of those were contaminated by GMO field corn. My screening procedures are not specifically designed to eliminate seeds that were pollinated by GMO corn, but if it did occur I'd know that the seed was off-type and eliminate it before replanting. Of course that requires perfect sorting of my seed corn, but that's easy enough to do. |
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Post by gilbert on Feb 10, 2014 18:53:32 GMT -5
Thanks for the reply! That makes sense.
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Post by oxbowfarm on Feb 10, 2014 19:03:20 GMT -5
You bring up some interesting points gilbert, but one answer is to not use landrace plant breeding for crops you don't think it would work with. If you are worried about GMO contamination, don't save your own corn, beets or kale. Or go to the ridiculous hassle of hand pollinating them.
The landrace breeding technique is an interesting method that I think all of us should explore, but it isn't necessary for every grower or every crop. Joseph does it for most everything because it pleases him to do so, and it has given him good results for some crops.
I personally am working on a few landrace projects, but I don't anticipate abandoning commercial seed or certain heirlooms that work well for me either. I have very specific breeding goals for my tomatoes, Joseph's tomato system is not workable for me. I have certain pepo squash varieties that sell really well for me at market, I'm not letting them get all crossed up in a mishmash landrace. I like to keep my dry beans separated by cooking characteristics, a mixed population like Joseph's wouldn't enable me to do that.
For me I'm interested in trying the landrace method for crops that are marginal here or require a lot of coddling. Runnerbeans are one I'm just starting to get going. I'm also starting a field slicing cuke landrace. If I had as much land as Joseph I'd prolly do a pickler landrace too. It would be awesome to select for some horizontal resistance to bacterial wilt and cucumber beetle.
If you like your heirlooms then obviously landraces are not workable. If you have a crop that you require a very specific phenotype from, then landraces probably won't work for you.
The other point is that landrace breeding isn't just letting your crops grow together willynilly. Your beginning diverse population gets heavily selected by the local environment AND BY YOU. Joseph's climate exerts a very strong selection pressure on his stuff for earliness and low heat requirements, then Joseph selects the hell out of it for the yield, flavor, and visual characters that he is looking for. He's just selecting the entire population at once.
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Post by philagardener on Feb 10, 2014 19:12:31 GMT -5
Thanks everyone for sharing your knowledge and making this a lively thread! As oxbowfarm mentioned, Wild Garden Seeds' solution ( www.wildgardenseed.com/product_info.php?products_id=141 ) to the bitter Delicata fiasco was going back to an older seed cache. Just as in our gardens, diversity can be money in the bank in the face of droughts or extreme temperatures. Whether locally adapted landraces or carefully reselected heritage strains, the best answer sounds like lots of different approaches! |
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Post by gilbert on Feb 10, 2014 19:43:47 GMT -5
I like heirlooms, but I certainly will be experimenting with creating some landraces out of them this year.
I am especially interested in using landraces, either my own or those of others, to select out new open pollinated varieties which are uniform enough to call a variety, but still contain lots of diversity for weather tolerance and other traits. I would generally like fruit appearance, taste, and yield to be relatively stable. But for some crops even that is not important to me, and a landrace would be excellent.
In my kale breeding project, I will be putting together tons of diverse genetics, and keeping what survives, after first making sure that even "weak" plants which can't survive the winter or summer here get a chance to cross their genes into the other plants. Since I am aiming for a perennial, I will probably never 'stabilize" it genetically. I think landraces make a lot of sense with perennials.
Also, I would like to see wildly diverse landraces shared among gardeners, who could then each select out their own unique varieties from the genetic alphabet soup. Some small seed companies are already doing this.
I also like the idea of using landraces to get around the high numbers of plants required to avoid inbreeding depression. Two plants of different varieties create a genetically diverse F1. Am I right in thinking that a landrace would require less plants, so long as one was not interested in total diversity but only in maintaining vigor? Every few years one could mix a bit of something else in to make sure. I am especially thinking about the brassicas, which are hard to overwinter, need large numbers to maintain vigor, but each produce lots of seed.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Feb 10, 2014 20:01:10 GMT -5
Some things like turnips, and Swiss chard grow perfectly well for me. Anything I plant will thrive so there is no reason to spend a lot of effort turning them into widely diverse landraces. I might like a bit more diversity than is common in a single commercial strain, but if I inter-plant two or three different strains of related varieties that's good enough for me. Spinach varieties either did super poor for me or they thrived. Not much in-between. No reason to spend a lot of effort on spinach. I could just as easily grow commercial cultivars if I kept records and found several that work well here. Now it just comes down to being too cheap to want to pay for seeds. And there is the ego associated with saying, "I grow nearly all of my own seeds." That'd be hard to give up. I am not willing to give up crookneck squash, so it is the only pepo I grow. I just can't stand the thought of eating odd-ball pepo squash. It's not something that would go over well at market. They'd end up being decorative gourds. I do meticulous culling on crookneck, using the same procedure I outlined for getting rid of bitterness. I started with a lot of different strains, so they can vary in vine length, and leaf shape, and bumpiness, etc, but they must be perfectly yellow and perfectly crooked. I keep thinking that I'd like to make a rambling yellow crookneck. I already have all the genes necessary, they'd just need to be slightly rearranged.  Maxima and Moschata squash sell well as phenotypically diverse landraces, so no reason to keep pure strains of those. Although I keep moving towards smaller squash since that's what the market tends to want, even though larger squash are more productive. But with warm weather crops... Oh my heck, if I didn't grow my own locally-adapted varieties then I wouldn't be able to grow them. I'm often the only farmer from my valley that takes muskmelons to the farmer's market. Next year I suspect that I'll be the only one with watermelons. Finally!!! Like Oxbowfarm said, in the early years of adapting a warm weather species to my garden the natural selection pressure is incredibly intense. I never plant all of the space available to me, so I can throw huge numbers of seeds into the ground and hope that something thrives and offers characteristics that are pleasing to me. Sometimes I cuss myself for including traits early on that I have to cull out later on. Oh well. Runner beans and Mixta squash completely failed for me 4 years in a row. The 5th year I was able to harvest a little bit of seed: I think part of the reason is because our end-of-season frosts were a month late last fall. But I'll take what I can get, perhaps that's the little bit of luck that they needed. I keep growing lagenaria squash, but they never really amount to anything for me. Perhaps I didn't have enough diversity to start with. I'm maintaining an heirloom wheat that was developed by my great great grandfather. I have no plans to mess with it's genetics. I turned down a request by Associated Foods to grow butternut squash for them. They wanted squash that were perfect clones of each other. That's not my style. |
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Post by nathanp on Feb 10, 2014 21:00:41 GMT -5
I can give an example of corn cross pollination. I grew Ashworth Sweet corn 50' downwind from a friend's Oaxacan Green Dent corn. He had approximately 125 plants. There were approximately 150 Ashworth Plants. There were approximately 130 total seeds on the Ashworth that were crossed. Even with conservatively low estimates (I did not count total cobs, or seeds per cob), with 200 cobs and 200 seeds per cob, that is approximately 40,000 seeds. The 130 total seeds were on approximately 30 cobs. Meaning under 15% of the cobs had crossed seeds, and overall percentage was likely under .3%. Those are conservative estimate, meaning the % was likely much lower. I am assuming that I got a higher % of crossing due to NW to SE winds than many people get. We had virtually no crossed seed in the other direction. Maybe 20 total seeds on 125 plants, which points to wind being the factor largely responsible. With these two corn types, crossed seed was easily identifiable as the coloration gave away the cross when green. When dried into seed, it was also easy to spot which ones did not have the sweet SU or SE genes. Ashworth x Oaxacan thread |
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Post by robertb on Feb 22, 2014 4:20:45 GMT -5
It doesn't take much to create a pollination barrier for most crops. Honeybee pollinated species would be an exception as they're specialist feeders which concentrate on whatever's producing best on the day. If parsnips, for instance, are flowering, my bees will visit every patch on the allotment site and cross pollinate the lot.
Most crops, however, are wind pollinated, or pollinated by other insects which visit every species they find. We're talking about small patches of a variety, and small quantities of pollen. Hedges are a major barrier. I have a head-high hedge round my plot, and find that there's no discernable cross-pollination with my neighbour. So he grows a scarlet runner, I grow black varieties. My beans don't show any sign of cross-pollination.
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Post by littleminnie on Feb 22, 2014 13:07:09 GMT -5
200 plants X 2 cobs per plant X 300 kernels per cob = 120,000 kernels of local corn. 6 kernels that were pollinated by the GMO corn a half mile away ==> 1 in 20,000 chance of being GMO. I don't run my life based on the possibility that such a rare and unusual situation might occur. The article says, "This genetic contamination represents less than 0.1% of the population in this generation". True enough, but the real number is less than 0.005% of the population. The article goes on to say: "... for the purposes of saving seed, any GMO contamination is unacceptable because the contamination will increase exponentially in each successive generation." To which I reply GMO crops are not magical. The contamination does not increase exponentially. In the following years it will still be limited to 0.005% of the population. GMO crops reproduce at the same rate as non-GMO crops. Without selection pressure one way or the other the genes contributed by the GMO pollen will continue at their present rate of 1 in 40,000. If 200 randomly selected seeds are replanted each year, then there is only a 1 in 100 chance that one of the GMO seeds will end up in next year's planting. So that's a 99% chance of eliminating the GMO just by replanting the seeds. There is the trick that some farmers tried with canola... Let the fields get contaminated with roundup-ready pollen, and grow out the seed, and spray it with Glyphosate to kill all of the non-contaminated plants. Then the survivors were totally GMO and the farmers thought they wouldn't have to pay patent royalties. Ha! The last of the roundup-ready patents expire this year... So better luck next time. I grow popcorn and sweet corn. It would be easy for me to tell if either one of those were contaminated by GMO field corn. My screening procedures are not specifically designed to eliminate seeds that were pollinated by GMO corn, but if it did occur I'd know that the seed was off-type and eliminate it before replanting. Of course that requires perfect sorting of my seed corn, but that's easy enough to do. Why does the article claim the GMO percentage would increase so much? What is the reason for that? As for farmers who want to replant GMO seed and not get sued, I have no pity for them! They are sleeping with the devil and need to accept the consequences. |
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Feb 22, 2014 13:43:27 GMT -5
Why does the article claim the GMO percentage would increase so much? What is the reason for that? I suppose that's what happens when farmer's try to do math... If one of the 200 seeds that you replanted happened to be one of the 6 in 120,000 GMO seeds, then the percentage of GMO in your crop would become 0.25%. As for farmers who want to replant GMO seed and not get sued, I have no pity for them! They are sleeping with the devil and need to accept the consequences. Right on! |
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