|
|
Post by blueadzuki on Nov 10, 2014 10:57:55 GMT -5
blueadzuki--I call the aleurone color "black" because it looks black in the varieties that have "black" in the name. But as you say, this "black" is just the result of there being lots of purple or blue pigment. The aleurone pigments are anthocyanins. There a number of chemical variants of the anthocyanins that can give you kernel colors from brown/red/pink/lavender through purple to blue depending upon exactly which anthocyanin or mix of anthocyanins you end up with after all the genes have had their say. There are various genes that cause more or less anthocyanin to be made and yet other genes that produce proteins that cause reactions that change the chemistry of the anthocyanin from one variant to another. Then there are also ears that look black but actually have very deep red pericarp. I call those "deep red" though many people would probably call them black. With the pericarp, it's easy to peel off a little and see it is actually red, not black. Also, black caused by red pericarp tastes so different from black caused by aleurone genes that I am loath to call them both black. That deep purple is actually now causing me some trouble as I try and make the seed selections on some of the mini-corn. Since I am trying to up the percentage of floury kernels on them (as yet, no floury mini cob I have found is all high soft starch. 50% is about as much as I have seen and most it's still just a smattering) I'm basically going through them all, saving the soft ones and using the hard ones to refine my cooking techniques (I am aware that, since flouryness is somewhat recessive to flintiness; the flinty kernels might have recessive flouryness. But I don't have the space to save EVERY kernel from every cob; I have to use SOME method of culling). To separate them out I use the light test (put a light source behind the kernel and see where the light passes through and rely on the fact hard endosperm is translucent, soft is opaque) And that is why I hate the really dark stuff the light test is USELESS on it. at the highest level of pigmentation, the layer (be it pericarp OR aleurone) just goes opaque, and seeing what is underneath is impossible. So more often than not, I wind up culling out all the dark purple as well. I really don't like doing that (miniature floury kernels are scarce enough without throwing away almost half of the potential candidates) but it's the only way to make sure that everything going in is floury (as for the culls, lets just say that, if I ever DO try and test how the mini's nixamatize, it's probably going to be with purple.) lucky I have not (as yet) bumped into a miniature cob with an light impenetrable pericarp (one experience I remember from my childhood was when I was on the annual fall door corn hunt and came upon an ear where the kernels had a deep opaque purple black pericarp over a colorless aluerone and a dead white floury endosperm, and the pericarp on some of the kernels was splitting. Dead white streaks on a jeb black base, rather visually stunning) Oh and with regard to your comments way back on what happens when sweet and floury gene mix, I'm assuming that that is more of a guideline than a hard and fast rule, or more accurately that there can be exceptions. It's just I remembered something. I mentioned my Viracocha corn earlier (the one that's basically some sweet kernels I pulled off an Andean cob with a chinmark pattern) Well I just remembered that that's what it was an Andean cob. The rest of the kernels looked like typical Andean corn, meaning they basically had NO hard starch. and Viracocha looks like normal Andean type Maiz Chulpe (except for the chinmarks) it's wrinkled, like all mature sweet corn kernels, but it certainly is not empty. By the rules you said sweet pollen mixing with a flour base should have made kernels that were basically empty skins. So would I be right in assuming the rules for the Andean stuff may work a little differently than those for the Northern ones? |
|
|
|
Post by jondear on Nov 10, 2014 17:55:08 GMT -5
Jondear--If you have a cross of sh2 and su sweet corns, you'll get field corn. Then both segregate out. And if you keep the wrinkled kernels and grow those you keep getting a mix of field and sweet. I've run into this situation when trying to breed sweet corn from sweet contamination in field varieties. Too often, there is more than one kind of gene for "sweet" involved. That's kinda what I figured... Thinking of what reed wanted to do with a flour and sweet, I can't help but wonder if it would make a good creamed corn in the milk stage. I have tried making creamed corn from fresh sweet corn, and just can't get anything close to commercial canned cream style corn. I saw on baker creaks corn listing a corn named White Nighting milling corn or Zale Halloway's corn. They said in their blurb, that dent was good for creamed corn. So who here makes creamed corn that is a reasonable facsimile to the canned stuff? |
|
|
|
Post by Carol Deppe on Nov 10, 2014 20:17:42 GMT -5
Reed, yes, that's all exactly correct. The kernels from a brown ear of Magic Manna could give you any of the colors typical of the variety. The ear is brown because the mother plant's genes produced the pericarps for all the kernels on her ears. But the individual kernels may or may not have inherited the gene for brown pericarp from the mother; the mother might have been heterozygous. And the different kernels will have been pollinated by various nearby plants.
|
|
|
|
Post by Carol Deppe on Nov 10, 2014 20:26:15 GMT -5
blueadzuki--
The sweet corn brings some flint character into the cross with a flour corn, so the situation is not totally impossible. So in that cross you will find plenty of kernels that look nearly empty, but there will be some with more flint in them. So if you do such a cross, you can recover a workable sweet corn. You just ignore the empty kernels and choose the ones that are wrinkled but fatter than the rest. Basically you get both the sweet gene and the flint/dent background type from the sweet corn.
|
|
|
|
Post by Carol Deppe on Nov 10, 2014 20:31:06 GMT -5
jondear--I don't know whether commercial creamed corn is made with special varieties. My understanding of the process is that the kernels of the cooked ears are scored and smashed so that the inside of the kernels comes out leaving the skins behind. There are devices available at old-fashioned supply places for doing it. (Lehman's, maybe?). Seems like it would work for any kind of sweet corn.
|
|
|
|
Post by blueadzuki on Nov 10, 2014 22:43:22 GMT -5
blueadzuki-- The sweet corn brings some flint character into the cross with a flour corn, so the situation is not totally impossible. So in that cross you will find plenty of kernels that look nearly empty, but there will be some with more flint in them. So if you do such a cross, you can recover a workable sweet corn. You just ignore the empty kernels and choose the ones that are wrinkled but fatter than the rest. Basically you get both the sweet gene and the flint/dent background type from the sweet corn. Hmm twelve crosses and all twelve filled. Guess I must have hit the lottery that time! |
|
|
|
Post by Walk on Nov 11, 2014 10:34:30 GMT -5
So it looks like, from reading this thread, that we should plant some Cascade Ruby-Gold Flint next year instead of Roy's Calais as it sounds like an improvement in many ways - deeper yellow interior color and more productive while maturing as early. I'm assuming that the deeper yellow color means more beta carotene? I was also wondering if it's possible to eat this corn in the "green" phase?
We've been struggling to grow both a flint and sweet variety while working around the pollen of the pervasive GMO crops in our area. We pre-sprout the flint in early May and have it in the ground at least a week before the farmer's crop. And we managed to just squeeze in a planting of Midnight Snack sweet corn on July 1st that matured out seed before the October 4th frost. I was perhaps mistaken that with the Roy's Calais and the Midnight Snack corns we would be able to see any crosses with neighboring field corn in the kernels, but it appears that it is more complicated than that? I'm hoping that our isolation by time is sufficient as we've been keeping track of our neighbors planting times and tasseling dates for the past few years to help us plan/plant.
|
|
|
|
Post by blueadzuki on Nov 11, 2014 10:47:19 GMT -5
As far as I know you can eat ANY corn in the "green phase" (the more common term is "milk stage") as corn on the cob (though with its thicker pericarp, I would imagine that popcorns make for very chewy corn on the cob and pod corn probably is even more unpleasant to eat that way.) you'll just have a much smaller window when the corn will be tasty as corn on the cob. Also non sweet corns often begin converting their sugars into starches rapidly once they are picked off the plant, so they lose sweetness fast. So you'll probably need to get the cobs in the pot quickly. In fact, for some of them you may have to do as they used to do in the old days and get the water in the pot to a boil before you go out and pick the ears (or for a few, actually bring the pot outside and set it on a fire right next to the cornfield, so that you can get the ears in the pot within minutes of being pulled off the plant.)
|
|
|
|
Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Nov 11, 2014 12:45:19 GMT -5
My strategy is that deeper colors equals more nutrition, even if I don't know which particular combination of chemicals are producing any particular color. The color in the endosperm of yellow corn is mostly due to xanthophylls, which are approximately 10X more concentrated in a typical yellow corn than carotenes. Xanthophylls and carotenes are both important in human nutrition. The Cateto Sulino that some of us are working with has high concentration of carotenes.
|
|
|
|
Post by reed on Nov 11, 2014 17:51:50 GMT -5
" I was perhaps mistaken that with the Roy's Calais and the Midnight Snack corns we would be able to see any crosses with neighboring field corn in the kernels, but it appears that it is more complicated than that? I'm hoping that our isolation by time is sufficient as we've been keeping track of our neighbors planting times and tasseling dates for the past few years to help us plan/plant." I think I was mistaken in a similar fashion. Apparently if a yellow GMO contaminates your corn it could show up and be easy to see, but it could also still be there without being visible, at least not on the first generation. It all has to do with that homozygous vs heterozygous gene situation and the possible ways they can combine. By the time your done you are dealing with a lot of possibilities. You got your pericarp color (that express in varying degrees) and your aleurone (also in varying degrees) and then your endosperm. And that's just for color! And I suspect this situation exists for every trait going. Does it do well in cold dirt, how tall does it get, does it do well in drought and on and on and on. If I understand it right I could for example check the endosperm color and only plant say white ones and probably increase the number of white ones in the next generation BUT NOT end up exclusively with white. At least not for several more generations, if then. I want to do like Joseph and make a landrace with as much diversity as possible even though I suspect the more diversity I start with the more generations it will take to select out the traits I want. However, I imagine Mother Nature will help on that so I won't have to do it all myself. I also want to do like Carol and select very specifically, it just may be a while till I can do that. Her Magic Manna for example has no color except paricarp and she made it from Painted Mountain. I dissected some Painted Mountain and there is plenty of non-paricarp color. It must have taken a lot of patience and know how to get rid if it.
For me it's all a conundrum, that's all there is to it. I'm already off the edge of the map though, from what I knew before and I ain't going back.
|
|
|
|
Post by Carol Deppe on Nov 11, 2014 20:19:25 GMT -5
So it looks like, from reading this thread, that we should plant some Cascade Ruby-Gold Flint next year instead of Roy's Calais as it sounds like an improvement in many ways - deeper yellow interior color and more productive while maturing as early. I'm assuming that the deeper yellow color means more beta carotene? I was also wondering if it's possible to eat this corn in the "green" phase? Yes, Cascade Ruby-Gold has a richer interior gold color. It's also more productive, has better husk coverage, bigger ears (8-12 rows, grain-bearing part up to 10 inches rather than about 8 inches), and has more colors. I don't know whether the deeper yellow color is more beta carotene or some other pigment. I bred for that deeper interior color (which I got from the 'Byron flint parent') partly because I wanted the yellow ears to be brighter and more beautiful. But in addition, every time I've run into that deeper colored yellow-gold-orange interior color in a flint corn, it has been associated with a deeper, richer, more complex flavor. The same is true of the yellow-gold ears of CRG compared with the yellow ears of Roy's Calais. There is an added issue leading to the washed out color of the yellow ears in Calais. The clear pericarp, where it is clear, is actually not clear. It is translucent rather than transparent. I.e. cloudy. This in addition to the pale yellow interior flint color makes the yellow ears appear pale and washed out. I've selected against the cloudy pericarp, but there is still a lot of it in CRG. I'm still improving the variety year by year. The photos of CRG round and about the internet are always of just the 8-row ears. Apparently because people think it should have 8 rows because both parents did. But when you cross a pencil cobbed 8-row variety to a full cob 8-row variety you get 8-12 rows in the F2. The 12-row ears dry just as fast as the 8-row as long as the overall ear size is medium thin. I've allowed the variety to vary for 8-12 rows because that allows it to develop more easily into having larger ears in the future. I don't know how it tastes in the green stage, as I design and participate in the planting and harvests and take the crop and do all the selecting, but don't grow it on my own place. I have a huge pile of CRG downstairs but haven't photographed it yet. When I've photographed it, I'll post the pics here. As for using being able to recognize crosses in both directions to isolate from a black sweet corn, neither CRG or Calais would work. You could see the crosses of either onto the sweet corn. But not the other direction. Black does not always show up when heterozygous even in crosses to white or yellow varieties. And it certain isn't going to show up most of the time on ears with a colored pericarp on top. Cascade Creamcap is a sister variety to Cascade Ruby-Gold. It is even more productive than CRG and has somewhat bigger ears. It has the mild neutral flavor typical of Rhode Island Whitecap that makes it ideal for situations in which you want a neutral flavor. To go with gourmet cheese, or smoked salmon, or to make sandwiches. Because you don't want yellow endosperm in CC or white in the CRG, I recommend giving CC and CRG a little distance. 50' should be plenty. Occasional crosses won't matter because the lines were developed from the same lot of breeding material. (I first ran the gene frequency of some occasional contaminating whites in the original material up to about 20% to avoid genetically bottlenecking when I selected white kernels. Then pulled both CC and CRG out of that material.) CC has a little yellow endosperm contamination and an occasional red pericarp ear in it anyway. And CRG has a little white endosperm in it. (I continue selecting against the off types in each.) So occasional contaminating crosses between them don't introduce any problems that aren't already there. If Midnight Snack has yellow endosperm, then you could grow it with Cascade Creamcap flint and see the crosses in both directions. But if Midnight Snack has white or mixed color endsperms it wouldn't work. |
|
|
|
Post by Carol Deppe on Nov 11, 2014 20:40:12 GMT -5
If I understand it right I could for example check the endosperm color and only plant say white ones and probably increase the number of white ones in the next generation BUT NOT end up exclusively with white. At least not for several more generations, if then. I want to do like Joseph and make a landrace with as much diversity as possible even though I suspect the more diversity I start with the more generations it will take to select out the traits I want. However, I imagine Mother Nature will help on that so I won't have to do it all myself. I also want to do like Carol and select very specifically, it just may be a while till I can do that. Her Magic Manna for example has no color except paricarp and she made it from Painted Mountain. I dissected some Painted Mountain and there is plenty of non-paricarp color. It must have taken a lot of patience and know how to get rid if it.
Fortunately varieties don't have to be perfect. And when you mass select, lingering recessive genes and occasional off-types are part of the trade-offs as the hidden recessives find each other occasionally. You can inbreed to identify unwanted recessives and eliminate them completely, but inbreeding really costs you in vigor when it comes to developing new op corns. And keep in mind that your corn variety is likely to start doing mostly what you want pretty fast. After that, it's just a matter of selecting the types you want by saving seed only from them. With corn, it's pretty much all useful for something. Wet-batter cornbread or nixtamalizing if nothing else. And you can define things permissively. With the Pancake White Manna and the Brown Gravy Manna I'm introducing this year, I'm just defining the varieties as 1/2 to 2/3 the indicated color, with the rest being the other colors. I sort of like the idea of leaving a good bit of the color variation still in these lines, just running the percentages up for people who have preferred uses. But it's partly practical. If I defined either of these varieties as being, say, 99% pure for the relevant color, it would take me a decade to get that by mass selection. Or longer, given that the pericarp colors are maternal. And I figure most people who want mostly pancakes, for example, would probably still want a little of other things as well as the colored ears for their beauty in displays. |
|
|
|
Post by blueadzuki on Nov 11, 2014 21:53:47 GMT -5
With corn, it's pretty much all useful for something. Wet-batter cornbread or nixtamalizing if nothing else. For the most part, I'd agree, I do, personally however believe personally that there are "toxic" trait combinations, traits that, when found together in the same corn, pretty much rob it of any practical use outside of window dressing (or perhaps given when most people put their ornamental corn, we should say "door dressing") For example after having spent a day running pop tests on all of the non-floury leftovers from that corn from the farmstand (mostly to make room for whatever I come home with tomorrow) I have come to the conclusion that popcorn and the shoepeg trait do not a good combination make. It can be gotten away with in a corn whose kernels are unusually small for it's ear size, but in most cases, the pressure of having two kernels in the same cupule pressing against each other leads to kernels that develop irregular shapes with too many odd sharp corners making weak spots to pop well. Gourdseed and pop also seems to be a non-viable combo. One of the mini corns I tested today was a red gourdseed flint (I've only ever heard gourdseed used in terms of dents but I assume that if a corn has all the tall thin kernel shape but no dimple, it's still accounted a gourdseed) and despite having a perfectly fine inner popcorn setup it was one of the poorest poppers (what few kernels managed to not simply crack along the germ didn't so much "pop" as "unravel"; they looked like shrapnel or the end of one of those exploding joke cigars after they go off. I suppose that such cors are theoretically still usable for wet batter cornbread and nixamaitizing (and since the insides are still rock hard flint, I imagine they'd be good polenta corns as well by your standards) so that part holds in theory. But in practical terms, as you pointed out, trying to nixamaitze tiny kernelled corns on anything but a small basis would probably be more trouble than it was worth. |
|
|
|
Post by Carol Deppe on Nov 12, 2014 9:28:51 GMT -5
Blueadzuki-I only said you could use corn of many (including very heterogeneous mixed types) for something. Not necessarily for what you would prefer. Good popcorn has a set of characteristics that aren't easy to recover if you cross to non-popcorn types. Popcorn has to have a certain kind of endosperm and a certain very tough skin that holds the steam in until the kernel explodes. If you cross a popcorn to a non popcorn, recovering that combination might not be easy. However, you can still use what you get up for wet-batter cornbread or nixtamalize. But there are lots of easier ways to get corn for those purposes than using a popcorn, of course.
I like polenta a lot. The very pure flint varieties take 3 volumes of water per volume of corn, so are pretty concentrated food, and they cook completely with 7 minutes of simmering with stirring and 45 minutes of sitting. That's very easy prep, and requires nothing more than the ability to boil water. Less pure flints or dents require more water per volume of meal, and don't really taste completely cooked unless they are both boiled forever and then baked. So to have flints that make great polenta, I make crosses only among pure flint types. If I crossed to a dent or flour, I doubt I'd ever be able to get back flint type pure enough to fix with just 7 minutes of labor. And I'm not much for screening to separate out the flinty part of a mixed type for polenta or boiling with stirring 45 minutes and then baking. So I cheerfully make crosses among pure flint types that I have checked out as working in my polenta recipe. But I don't cross a flint to anything other than another flint. If your primary use is wet-batter cornbread only and you don't care about polenta, though, you could cross a flint to a dent or flour and make a dent that would probably be higher yielding than my pure flints. (And if you used a pure color dent or flour and a pericarp-variable aleurone-fixed flint, you could make a dent that would have ears of pure colors that could be sorted to give different flavors.)
I was being simplistic, however, to say you can make wet-batter cornbread from any corn. You can, but how the cornbread tastes depends very much on the corn used. And some tastes awful. I bred Magic Manna because I liked the agronomical characteristics of Painted Mountain, but made into cornbread it tastes pretty much like mud. I checked around here, and while many people grew PM, they just sold it or used it as ornamental corn. They either didn't eat it at all, or they ate it mixed into recipes that diluted it a lot with wheat flour or commercial cornmeal. My cornbread is made just from the corn. I asked Dave Christienson if he ate Painted Mountain, and he does, but not as cornbread. He nixtamalizes it. So far as I know, every corn tastes fine nixtamalized. That process removes the skins and imposes its own flavors on endosperm. I don't usually nixtamalize. I consider it just too much work. And the main thing I want from corn was bread and other baked goods. (And polenta for the flints.) So I bred something out of PM that better fit my needs.
I notice that Johnny's has now separated their field corns into culinary and ornamental types, and both Painted Mountain and Earth Tones Dent are listed as ornamentals. (To my tastes, Earth Tones Dent also tastes like mud.) Presumably the Johnny's classification is in recognition of the fact that these corns make pretty foul cornbread. However, they undoubtedly do fine nixtamalized, so are not nonculinary if that is your ordinary use.
|
|
|
|
Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Nov 12, 2014 11:30:11 GMT -5
Any corn makes great chicken food...
|
|
