Questions about GMO, Corn Genetics and some Corn Pictures

[blueadzuki]

Which would be great if I was able to keep chickens. But I'm not, our zoning prohibits all livestock. Technically people here aren't even supposed to have pet rabbits, though no one as far as I know has ever tried to fine anyone who did. I sometimes wonder what is going to happen the day when someone in our neighborhood gets a pot bellied pig (pigs are EXPLICITLY banned).


I wasn't trying to attack you Carol, just stating that I though the statement was a little broad (as you yourself realized). Where you meant "any corn can be used in someway" I read "every corn is well suited to some purpose." My mistake. To paraphrase Orwell, "All corns are usable, but some are more useable than others."

Popcorn is always a bit of a quirk in corn if compared to ALL of the other kinds (so I suppose is sweetcorn) if anyone is a fan of the British sci-fi comedy Red Dwarf, popcorn is sort of like Lister's Triple Fried Egg Sandwich with Chili sauce and Chutney. Individually a lot of the traits are "wrong" but together they work. The problem is they ALL have to be there for it to work. Take one away and you don't just reduce the popcorn's ability to be a popcorn; you destroy it.

Actually the "mud" thing is why the container where I keep leftover "reject" corn kernels from my selection processes on the "regular" size corn that I think might be actually edible without extreme methods is, after I get around to ordering some pickling lime (or dad has done enough fall fires I can simply use the ashes from the fireplace) and have nixamaitzed them, slated to wind up as a batch of corn nuts or parch corn, not bread or tortillas. Since they are leftovers of assorted sizes, shapes and colors, and there isn't enough of any one of them to make doing anything on them alone worthwhile, that seems the best plan, as it keeps the varios kernels discrete which will hopefully minimize the "mud" issue. If any of them tastes nasty/is too hard to chew, I just have to chuck THOSE ones, not the entire kit and kaboodle.

[reed]

Nov 12, 2014 11:30:11 GMT -5 Joseph Lofthouse said:

Any corn makes great chicken food...

That's what I figure, not to mention decorative corn sells around here for as much as $1.50 an ear and sweet corn for as little as 20 cents, but I think I can do a lot better than that.  

edit: I mean better than for decoration or chicken feed, even though I will share with the chickens. 

[Carol Deppe]

Everyone--What is your experience with the inheritance of row number and cob size and width in crosses?

[reed]

I don't have much in the way of experience but I tend to be partial to those shorter fatter ears with more rows. I also like those softer and somewhat hollow cobs because they are so easy to shell. I'm thinking I would like to encourage those traits along with the larger kernels. 

I'm guessing a thinner ear is often preferred for a shorter drying time, Is that correct? 

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Nov 14, 2014 3:14:53 GMT -5 Carol Deppe said:

Everyone--What is your experience with the inheritance of row number and cob size and width in crosses?

It seems to me like row number and cob size are heavily influenced by growing conditions: The fertility of the soil, the temperature, weeds, moisture, and who knows what else...

I made a cross about 5 years ago: [Earth Tones Dent X Sugary Enhanced Sweet Corn]. One of the F2 descendents had around 28 rows of kernels. Gorgeous beautiful cobs. I replanted a patch from that cob, but didn't find enough offspring with high row count to want to continue the project.

I suppose that it's like herding cats... You can move the population in a general direction, but don't put too much hope in any particular specimen. It might just be due to an environmental fluke. Dave Christensen put a lot of effort into selecting for 8 rows and long skinny cobs. His population is very consistent.

I haven't been selecting directly for these traits. I indirectly select for row number, and cob length/width because larger cobs with more rows seem like they have more food on them. I'm back from a break to count row numbers... I looked at sweet corn, popcorn, and dent/flour/flint corns from across North and South America, and jumbled up crosses between them. If I were to make a bell curve of row number, there would be a huge spike around 14 rows of kernels.

[blueadzuki]

That sounds about right. In my counts the "normal" size corns tend to usually be in the 12-14 range; pure miniature popcorns in the 16-18. The mixed up farmers market stuff tends to be in this range too, though there are an unusually large number of ones that are higher (this might be more evidence of a lot of them having quite a bit of strawberry popcorn in their heritage, as that often has an unusually high number of rows).

Those mini's have also made me realize how much of a difference row number can make in the appearance of the ear. In the stuff I have found some ears that, setting aside all factors about what kind of starch construction they have, simply LOOK miniaturized, less like a popcorn ear than a normal Indian corn ear that has been shrunk. Up till now I always though this effect simply had to do with the kernel shape (they tend to have kernel that are flatter and wider than what one normally sees in a popcorn. However while shelling the most recent batch, I had an epiphany. A quick count confirmed it, the cobs that have that "look" tend to be on the lower end of the row count, in the 12-14 range. They sort of look like miniature full size ears in part because they have the spacing of full size ears. Should I ever want to re-plant the more "standard" looking material. That could actually be a useful trait to have since I know there are niche markets who are after that (for example the person who runs one of the Native American craft stores my dad goes to from time to time mentioned that she knew a carver of kachinas who had complained that he was often frustrated by the fact that, sometimes he wanted to use actual ears of corn as part of the accessories of some of his figures but couldn't since full size corn ears were too big and the miniature kind didn't "look right" (maybe I put some broads to the side the next time I have some to spare, put them in an envelope and the next time Dad wants to go to that store, give them to the proprietor to pass on to him.)

On the other end one of the Andean corns from the original cache I found got saved even through it was almost pure white (I was after propagating colored stock, so a lot of the white stuff wound up being shunted to my projects on how to cook Andean corn.) because it's eight rows combined with it's kernel shape resulted in a ear that was almost square in cross section (each pair of rows basically 90 degrees from the next).

[Walk]

How about plant spacing affecting yields/cob size? I was just talking to a market grower near here about her Floriani Red Flint which made enormous, fat cobs this year, unlike last year. But what is the ideal spacing for a flint corn like Carol's Cascade Ruby-Gold, which I'm assuming is near the size of the Roy's Calais? I was thinking of planting in double rows 36" apart with the pathway spacing of 48" (the beds are 48" wide and the paths are 36", so planting in 6" from the edge of the bed would give this spacing). In the past I've spaced them equidistantly about 1' apart with 3 "rows" the length of the bed. If planting in the wide rows, I'm hoping that I can place a seed every 8"? That would give me the same number of plants per bed, just arranged differently.

[reed]

I would think if you can increase your spacing without decreasing your # of plants that couldn't be anything but good. In my first try I'm going with 1' apart with rows 3' feet apart to maximize the # of plants to 1000. I mostly want seeds from as many different plants as possible even if it might mean less seeds per plant or less than possible size of plant or ears.

I'll worry about some of these other things later but there are so many variables I wonder if there really is a good rule for different gardens even if they were growing the same variety. On one of my internet ventures looking up some technical term I saw here I came across a scholarly publication from a few decades ago and if I remember right from a University in Iowa. It was on Amazon and it only let me have an eight page sample but it was talking about this very topic. It said in a nut shell, that NO variety of corn can be expected to perform consistently in different locations.

I have qualities in mind I want my corn to have and will start with things that I think have those qualities but most important to start is, will it grow and produce in my climate under the conditions I'm able to provide?

[reed]

Hope your not getting to sick of it but here is more about the "Big Red" ear. It has 16 rows of big kernels with 40+ kernels per row.  Below is what the kernels look like cooked in the microwave and they are delicious, no butter, no salt, just plain delicious. (even better in the iron skillet) Those big hull chunks that look like they should be nasty just crunch and dissolve in a most delightful way. yum.

 

I don't know if you would call this parched, popped or what and I don't know if this was ground and baked in corn bread if it would have the same flavor but I thinking of planting an entire row (100 plants) (maybe two) from this ear with half de-tasseled and half not and see if I can move this flavor into a diverse strain like Painted Mountain. 

Now that I know the flavor is associated with the pericarp I know what to look for. Unfortunately this is the only ear and the only sample from all I have accumulated that has this pericarp color. Other similar looking ears and kernels including Painted Mountain have a somewhat transparent pericarp with more color below.

Except for some to germ and Round-Up test "Big Red" here is going into the freezer before I eat it all. 

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Reed: I've been chasing a black/red ear like that in my popcorn project... It consistently ranks the best tasting in the patch, so far I haven't been able to turn it into a great popcorn. (I haven't put much effort into it, just replanting it ear-to-row and detasseling so that it doesn't shed pollen into the rest of the patch.)

[blueadzuki]

Speaking of nice pericarps, I wanted to show you this


Please note my camera seems to have yellowed the colors a little. This corn is NOT red, but a surprisingly striking shade of deep fuchsia (kernel pericarp only, the cob, calices, and husk are all colorless. In fact, they are whiter than normal).. Really pretty, and that's coming from a person who is heavily biased AGAINST colored pericarps (since I am working toward a multicolored speckled corn, I really want the pericarps to be all colorless since, in my opinion, most aleurone colors look uglier under a colored pericarp "wash")

In fact, the color is so good that, now that I have siphoned off the sample I'm keeping for planting I have put the rest in a little container and come Tuesday (when I have the house to myself) I'm going to heat up some water dig out some fruit and spices and see how this one performs as a chica morada corn. I imagine the beverage will be a bit paler than the normal one (since the corn is fuchsia not deep purple) but should still be pretty.

[reed]

Have you tried that one parched? If so is it good that way?

I haven't fed the other stuff to the chickens yet. Now that I have a better idea what you are after I'll go back through and see if there are more of the clear pericarp speckled types. I'm pretty sure there are.

[blueadzuki]

No I haven't. I only got the ear last Thursday, and I usually have to wait for Tuesdays before I can go futzing around with cooking things. I might be able to sacrifice a few kernels to the skillet, but I don't have all that many (when I got the ear, pretty much the whole of four rows on the back side were gone.) and chica morado tends to need a fair amount of corn (the recipe I originally used on the back of the bags of corn from the bodega had one using the whole bag for a few quarts and those bags had three or four ears. I can adjust the recipe down a little but there is a limit to how small a pot I can use, and how long I can boil the stuff down to concentrate it). And the kernels feel rather flinty to parch well.

[Carol Deppe]

Nov 14, 2014 8:39:57 GMT -5 reed said:

I'm guessing a thinner ear is often preferred for a shorter drying time, Is that correct? 

Right. Here in maritime Oregon corn goes to apparent dryness in the field, but still requires a little finishing off indoors before it is safe from mold and dry enough to shell. But that is only if the overall thickness of the ears is modest. If the ear is fat it takes much more serious drying such as an actual drier with fan and heat rather than just putting the pile in front of a fan indoors and turning it a few times. New Englanders have the same problem, so much native American and heirloom New England corn is 8-row or at least fairly narrow cobbed.

With Cascade Ruby-Gold, which varies from 8-12 rows, I've had a good chance to see how row number, ear thickness, and gaps between double rows (such as is typical of Roy's Calais) affects drydown. My prediction as I began developing Cascade Ruby-Gold was that with equal ear thickness, the ears with pairs of rows with big gaps should dry down faster. Wrong. They don't seem to. Likewise, I would have predicted that with equal ear thickness, the 8-row ears would dry down faster than the 12-row ears. Wrong again. They dry down the same. The only thing the ears seem to care about when it comes to drying down is how thick they are. Thicker ears always dry down slower than thinner ones.

[Carol Deppe]

Nov 14, 2014 17:07:10 GMT -5 Walk said:

How about plant spacing affecting yields/cob size? I was just talking to a market grower near here about her Floriani Red Flint which made enormous, fat cobs this year, unlike last year. But what is the ideal spacing for a flint corn like Carol's Cascade Ruby-Gold, which I'm assuming is near the size of the Roy's Calais? I was thinking of planting in double rows 36" apart with the pathway spacing of 48" (the beds are 48" wide and the paths are 36", so planting in 6" from the edge of the bed would give this spacing). In the past I've spaced them equidistantly about 1' apart with 3 "rows" the length of the bed. If planting in the wide rows, I'm hoping that I can place a seed every 8"? That would give me the same number of plants per bed, just arranged differently.

I usually aim for an average of 8" between plants and 3.5' between rows in our seed production field, but where two nice plants are only 6" apart, we leave them and just give them a little more space on the other side. The space between rows has more to do with what I've generally found convenient for working in the corn, not something I've tested rigorously. Generally, with more space you get more and bigger ears. A friend spaced some CRG at 6" with 30" between rows last year, and it was totally consistent since he transplanted. He got one-stalk plants with 1 ear per plant, with the grain bearing part of the ears up to about 8". (ie actual ear size larger.) That was under conditions of relatively low fertility. (He tilled under some poor untended sod and used no fertilizer.) So if you want as many plants represented as possible in a population of CRG, yes you can grow them as low as 6" apart. And I suspect you could get away with double rows 30 inches apart too.

On the other hand, my grower of CRG in 2014 spaced the plants at 12" and got ear sizes up to 10 inches of grain on the ear, really beautiful big ears, usually 2/plant.

Where there are gaps in a row, and a plant has 2' on both sides, CRG tends to make three full-size grain-bearing stalks and produce an ear or two on each.

Fertility also affects things. One year we had a glorious winter cover crop of vetch and tilled that in and planted CRG at our ordinary spacing (which ends up being about 6 - 12" but averages about 8"). The CRG, which has been selected for ability to perform under conditions of relatively modest fertility, went totally nuts. Many plants had 3 or 4 stalks with one or two good size ears on every stalk.