Cilantro breeding projects

[castanea]

I was interested in evaluating cilantro variability years ago and bought seed from many different sources but for some reason never actually got around to planting it. What I found out though was that you can get some widely divergent genepools of cilantro from spice companies. While Indian and Mexican coriander seeds are pretty well known and widely available, there are other countries that export coriander seeds such as Morocco:

www.thespicehouse.com/spices/coriander-seed-whole-and-ground

At Eastern European grocers you can frequently find seed from Romania and Ukraine. It used to be easy to find Russian seeds but those may be rare now. Seeds from Thailand can also be found in some Asian stores. You can also get Asian seeds from Evergreen:

www.evergreenseeds.com/cocpa.html

Kitazawa:

www.kitazawaseed.com/seed_356-80.html

and the Canadian seed company Agrohaitai:

www.agrohaitai.com/herb/coriander/coriander.htm

[blueadzuki]

Kalyustan's (a major spice specialist in the NY Metro area) carries both Indian and Moroccan coriander

One warning if you are going the "buy through the spice market" method. Be careful with a Thai brand called "Red Cock" (or possibly Cock Brand or Rooster Brand, it's been a while since I saw it*) Their whole Thai Coriander is the stuff I mentioned that was laced with hemp seeds, so be careful with disposal if you have very proactive law enforcement.

[blueadzuki]

Oct 5, 2015 9:18:50 GMT -5 blueadzuki said:

The worst offender was some stuff I got from a bodega (round seeded, so presumably a Middle eastern type, but with seeds far smaller than any kind I had seen before) That one more or less bolted instantly, it literally went straight from germinating seed to feathery adult foliage, no wide leaf cilantro in between. (on the other hand it was also super early to set seed, so if you lived somewhere with a very short season and needed actual coriander back, I imagine it could be just what you were looking for.

Just a note that, while cleaning I found a baggie of seed of this one. As I said, it's probably useless for cilantro, but if there is someone who wants to play around with it (or needs a coriander that will basically seed almost as soon as it sprouts) let me know

[andyb]

Thanks for the links, castanea. I'd found Evergreen Seeds and bought some nice seeds from them, but the others are new.

I think I have enough diversity in my breeding stock right now. One of the nice things about breeding for a trait like root size in a plant not normally grown for the root (at least in the US) is that there's a lot of variation even between plants from the same seed packet. I'm also dealing with a couple of disease and pest issues that I originally got from commercial cilantro seed, so I'm a little hesitant to bring in new seed from dubious sources without doing some quarantining. I'll keep it in mind if I find that I need some more diversity or if I start a new project.

Blueadzuki, I live in Washington State so the law enforcement isn't terribly proactive when it comes to hemp seeds, not that I have any plans to grow it or its cousin, especially with a toddler in the house. I've also started splitting the seeds in half to have more control over planting and to avoid having most plants come up in pairs immediately next to each other, so I'd definitely notice a hemp seed. Good to know to watch out, though!

[blueadzuki]

Or you can simply avoid that specific brand. It's hardly the only one out there (even for Thai coriander) and seems to be the only one with that specific problem.

[castanea]

Jan 28, 2016 1:20:18 GMT -5 andyb said:

Thanks for the links, castanea. I'd found Evergreen Seeds and bought some nice seeds from them, but the others are new.

I think I have enough diversity in my breeding stock right now. One of the nice things about breeding for a trait like root size in a plant not normally grown for the root (at least in the US) is that there's a lot of variation even between plants from the same seed packet. I'm also dealing with a couple of disease and pest issues that I originally got from commercial cilantro seed, so I'm a little hesitant to bring in new seed from dubious sources without doing some quarantining. I'll keep it in mind if I find that I need some more diversity or if I start a new project.

Blueadzuki, I live in Washington State so the law enforcement isn't terribly proactive when it comes to hemp seeds, not that I have any plans to grow it or its cousin, especially with a toddler in the house. I've also started splitting the seeds in half to have more control over planting and to avoid having most plants come up in pairs immediately next to each other, so I'd definitely notice a hemp seed. Good to know to watch out, though!

My wife loves big cilantro roots. Occasionally we find some with large roots at a local Coop but most grocers cut off the roots.

I really think highly of Agrohatai. The seeds I have obtained from them have always had very high germination rates and they have great service even though the seed comes from Canada. I planted out seeds of Chinese toon trees from various sources last year and the only seeds that germinated were those from Agrohatai. Chinese toon seeds have to be very fresh.

[andyb]

I've pretty much finished planting my big patch of big-root cilantros for the spring. Hopefully I don't have to replant. I saved seed from 50 plants last year, and would ideally like to have five plants from each sib group. My plan is to select between one and three plants from each sib group this summer, for a total of about 75 plants, and then let them open-pollinate. Hopefully this winter I can grow a generation under lights, self-pollinate them, and do a solid round of lineage selection next year.

I also had my first success with getting a cilantro plant to bolt under lights. I tried various experiments over the winter, all of them unsuccessful, and then finally just planted a few pots to let them get whatever photoperiod my other projects gave them. I started slowly dropping the photoperiod about a week ago for some bean projects, and just saw the start of some bolting.

The plot below shows the photoperiod vs. days since planting. The big dip in the middle is from when I went on vacation in mid-February and turned the photoperiod down to reduce water consumption. Interestingly, that didn't trigger bolting. I'll need to do some more tests to see if there's an age threshold or if it's the gradual reduction in photoperiod or possibly something else.

[andyb]

The first round of cilantros for the big-root project were devastated by slugs. Of 300-400 seeds that went into the soil, 8 plants survived.

This was complicated by my attempt to get rid of a bruchid beetle infestation. I'd planned to do a cold treatment with dry ice (holding them at liquid nitrogen temperature for a few days supposedly kills the larvae but not the seeds) but didn't get around to it last winter. Instead, I had the bright idea of germinating the seeds on paper towels indoors and only planting the seeds that sprouted. Of course, it didn't occur to me at the time that each cilantro "seed" has two seeds in it, and one might have a bruchid larva while the other could sprout. So, I ended up with magnifying glasses and fine tweezers, sorting through and splitting hundreds of cilantro seeds and planting the sprouted ones, with tweezers, every day or two for a couple of weeks.

This was for the first planting, the one devastated by slugs. I'm not a big fan of slugs.

For the second planting, I planted split seeds densely in 72-cell trays under lights indoors. When they were at the 2-3 true leaf stage, I separated the seedlings and removed all the soil and unsprouted seeds and transplanted them bare-root in the garden bed. This worked surprisingly well and most survived. So, I now have a procedure for dealing with slugs and with bruchids.

I did a thinning yesterday, and expect them to start bolting any time now. Some sib groups didn't make it and I'll probably regrow them. Overall, it's looking like I won't lose this growing season, which is a relief.

[andyb]

Quite a few big-root cilantro sib groups had at least one plant surviving, so I did a round of selection a few weeks ago when the first few started bolting. I saved the largest-rooted plant from each sib group, the largest overall, and the largest in each subsection of the bed. I think I should be near my goal of saving seed from 75 plants in the second generation.

An interesting problem that's come up is that about a third of the plants haven't started bolting at all, while most bolted as a group starting 1-2 weeks ago. Normally, this would be a good thing, but I really want to get the genetics mixed up this year. The non-bolting ones all have a flattened rosette of leaves, which was a characteristic of the Syrian seeds from the USDA. Those were very late-bolting, so I'm guessing that's where they came from. I'm a little worried that the plants will fall into two separate non-overlapping groups. I guess I'll deal with it if it happens, noting groups of late flowers on the early plants and early flowers on the late plants. If nothing else, I can put off selecting for late-bolting for another generation or two.

[templeton]

Showing signs of a true breeder/addict, andyb. tweezers, hours fussing over seedlings, I can feel an intervention coming on. If you can't get your early and late bolters to synch this year, then perhaps keep two lines, and differentially sow next season. This assumes it's a life stage controlled thing rather than photoperiod, of course.
Have you come across Bifora testiculata? Came up in my garden a few years ago - but no idea what the root tastes like. Foliage smells like a strange coriander/cilantro.
T

[andyb]

The time for an intervention is long gone. Most evenings for the last 6 months I've been retreating to my basement, fine tweezers in hand, attempting intraspecific bean crosses. Huddled under the mosquito net, with a pair of magnifying glasses on, I'm sure it's quite a sight.

As far as I can tell, the bolting is driven by environment rather than life stage. The more I think about it, waiting a few more generations before selecting for that trait seems like the best idea.

I hadn't heard of Bifora testiculata before, but after some googling, I can say it's aptly, if not appetizingly, named. A couple of phylogenic trees have it very closely related to coriander; I wonder if a cross would be possible?

[templeton]

Jul 3, 2016 17:26:52 GMT -5 andyb said:

The time for an intervention is long gone. Most evenings for the last 6 months I've been retreating to my basement, fine tweezers in hand, attempting intraspecific bean crosses. Huddled under the mosquito net, with a pair of magnifying glasses on, I'm sure it's quite a sight.

As far as I can tell, the bolting is driven by environment rather than life stage. The more I think about it, waiting a few more generations before selecting for that trait seems like the best idea.

I hadn't heard of Bifora testiculata before, but after some googling, I can say it's aptly, if not appetizingly, named. A couple of phylogenic trees have it very closely related to coriander; I wonder if a cross would be possible?

It'reminds of coriander' rather than being the same - it's a bit acrid in both smell and flavour. I thought I had a weird coriander phenotype initially, until an ag scientist put me straight.

[andyb]

My flowering cilantro plants are apparently a major destination for bees in my neighborhood, and cilantro has lavender pollen:

[andyb]

I noticed a few days ago that there were quite a few umbels with no seeds on my cilantro plants. After some more investigation today, I found out that a flock of juncos has been devastating them. There are drifts of hollowed-out seed husks on the ground. So I pulled out my pocket knife and harvested all the plants with mature(ish) seeds and now have about fifty of them hanging in the laundry room. Another twenty or so are in the garden, still flowering. I'll cover them with bird netting and watch them closely.

I have no idea how young you can harvest cilantro seeds and have them be viable; I guess I'll find out. It might be a good idea to note some umbels of different maturities and do germination tests this winter. In any case, there are enough seeds left that I should only lose a few plants entirely.

[andyb]

I ended up harvesting seeds from a total of eighty cilantro plants this year, though I only got a few seeds each from about ten or fifteen of them. The last harvest was on 9/15 and the seeds were still pretty green. I was leaving for a week-long trip and was worried that the birds would get all of the seeds before I got back.

Looks good for next year, which will be the third generation for my big-root cilantro project.