coloured popcorn?

[blueadzuki]

Jan 6, 2016 20:29:49 GMT -5 flowerweaver said:

I'm going to try my hand at growing the Andean corn out again this year blueadzuki. Last year I got two stalks to tassel but the rain kept the pollen from transferring to the silking Morado Potolero next to it. Those plants did not form normal ears (recall, I got those odd multiple-in-one mutant ears with no kernels).

Actually that sort of sounds like what happened the one time I got an ear of an Andean; a little nubby thing with no functional kernels (since by then the pollen had long since gone)

Some of the tassels can come out odd looking too, I think both of those plants developed tassels shaped like paintbrush ends (I actually had to do a double take to recognize them as corn, I originally thought some strange new tall grass had showed up on our side yard (I suppose that is technically true....)

[diane]

This is so funny - I googled for pollen viability, and it seems marijuana growers are the only people interested.

I bred rhododendrons for years, and the pollen was viable for months, just sitting in an envelope in my kitchen. Dried and frozen it would
have lasted much longer.

So what is it about corn pollen that makes it lose viability quickly?

[steev]

As a wind-pollinated plant, why would it help for corn pollen to have long viability? If it doesn't hit its target, once it hits the ground, it's useless.

Marijuana pollen is a whole different deal, having its pollination mediated by an occasionally sentient ape.

[diane]

OK. I've been reading various university reports on the topic.

Possibly a tassel could be mailed, as anthers shed pollen over a period of about a week.

However, too hot, too cold, too moist, too dry ---- no corn. I'm amazed it has managed to make itself one of the most prolific plants on the planet.

So, I think the only way to get some of those Andean pollen grains onto our northern plants is to hop on a plane with our potted corn plants and
take them south. Mexico? Peru?

[steev]

Mexico is NoAm, so Peru. If it can be written off as a business expense, seems like a good reason for a field trip to SoAm.

[reed]

Jan 7, 2016 2:09:28 GMT -5 diane said:

So, I think the only way to get some of those Andean pollen grains onto our northern plants is to hop on a plane with our potted corn plants and
take them south. Mexico? Peru?

Assuming one could get their hands on some Andean seeds couldn't you just start some in a green house or even a south window and then take them outside when it warmed up? I'm gonna try that about mid March or so with some longer season stuff I want mixed into mine.  

[blueadzuki]

I've tried doing that since the one EASY thing about Andean corn is getting seed (well, it's easy if you live near a Latin american market or have access to a website that does Latin foods, and are content with industry standard white or yellow.)

The problem is that space thing, compared to most other plants, corn transplants really badly. A lot of the important bits of the root system travel laterally and damage to any part of it can arrest or ever stop all further growth and maturity. So if you are planning to do something like that, you almost need to plan to transplant the plant in a "plug" that's as wide as the plants root system will be, which is quite large For Andean it's even more so since a healthy Andean plant is MASSIVE; fifteen to twenty feet high is not at all uncommon. Plus there is the time length. You aren't talking about buying your plants and extra twenty or so days; Andean corn has a seed to seed period of pretty close to a whole YEAR (270-360 days is about the norm) and it does most of it's actual mass growth near the beginning, so you are talking about trying to move around something that is physically in the tree range with a root system that can be several hundred feet in diameter and that you have to get ALL of.

[reed]

We have an international market up near Cincinnati that last I time was there had a very large kernel, very dark colored corn, prepackaged with maybe four whole ears in a bag. I'm pretty sure it said "product of Peru" and I think was for Chicha Morada. They also had a corn with giant and I mean giant, white kernels.

I sure am not going to undertake working with something with maturity anywhere near that range but next time we go I'll see if I can pick some up to bring home and germ test. If it sprouts I'll put it on the trade thread.

The market is called Jungle Jim's. I don't know if it is a chain, I don't think so but if it is and there is one in your area it has an amazing assortment of stuff I'v never heard of and wouldn't know what to do with. Lots of it with labels in other languages. Looking at the labels on some of the bulk bags of stuff from India and other places is like going to an art museum.

[blueadzuki]

Yeah that's morado, that's how they package it

That "giant one" is Cuzco Gigante. It'll grow too provided it's untreated (it's sold both raw and pre-nixamatized). It technically comes in colors other than dead white, but they are even rarer than they are for the huycatay (the "mountain" Andean corn we are mostly taking about). In the whole of my searching (and I search a lot) I have found maybe ten kernels with colors, mostly red chinmark streaks but a few with purple stippling too (though on the weak side) There is also red streaked in the Explorer's collection at Baker Creek (it's the very last corn listed). I've also heard from others that it can have purple morado like pericarp, but have not seen that personally.

[blueadzuki]

Going by a little research I did, there HAS been a little success with Andean in the Pacific Northwest as well as some other costal areas. Hawaii might work as well (provided you were planting really high up) as would any other really high tropical regions (based on some things with some beans, I suspect that Fort Portal, Uganda might be a good match, but I don't think we have any members there.)

I also overestimated the time a bit, It's more like 165-195 days than 200-270 (though that is still WAAY longer than most of us have)

There is also a small chance that one could game it. According to what I read one of the big impediments is that most Andean corns don't start tasseling until there are less than 12 hours of day which for most of us won't happen until around the autumnal equinox so around Sep. 21, so that puts one in sort of a double bind. For most of the country that doesn't leave enough time between tasseling and the advent of killing frost to let ears develop. For those of us who DO have enough time (the very far south, where you can basically grow through the winter, there may not be enough time for them to develop to requisite maturity to tassel (Andean corn likes cool weather so both extreme cold AND extreme heat kill it (not sure what the heat cutoff is buy when I have grown it here in New York, it sprouts around Mid May Early June, goes into heat related stasis/ suffering by Mid June Early July and doesn't perk up again until around the second or third week of September (and sometimes not until October/November, if it is a late summer) Basically it likes the time of year when you need long sleeves, but no coat 165 continuously of that.

But it occurs to me that if you have enough warmth to get them past seedling stage, you may be able to "fake" the plants out with a timed covering (to break up the day) If you can do that and then water the plants LIKE HELL (half of the damage they go through in the summer is because their root system suddenly becomes WAAY thirstier (I suspect the roots being underground slow down growing less than the above ground parts.)

[diane]

Well, I have a two-storey greenhouse.

The other possibility is to have someone in South America grow some of our northern corn, allow it to be pollinated with Andean pollen and then
send us the seeds.

[blueadzuki]

That kind of presumes that our corn wouldn't have as much trouble growing there as theirs does here. It isn't like crops work along the lines where "can grow here" means can grow here and everywhere warmer than here." Our 60-120 stuff would probably find the cooler temperatures too low to set tassel, or be waiting for a day length that will not come (remember, the closer you get to the tropics, the closer the day and night get to being equal all the time.) I suppose you could cross the corn with corn from slightly further north and then repeat the process, gradually moving the traits you want up the continent until the get where you want (that is basically how corn got up here in the first place) But it would take a long time.

[diane]

Well, I guess I should have started with corn when I started plant breeding 70 years ago. Bit late for a long-term corn project now.

However, I could grow some in the greenhouse which is cool but frost-free. I could also grow a succession of northern ones so there'd be some
silks to coincide with Andean pollen. Then I could distribute seeds to interested people.

Suggestions for what to grow, with the aim of coloured popcorn (or flour ) ? I have room for only about a dozen of those tree-sized Andean corn plants
you described, since I have a large fig tree and grapes.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

The South American races of corn that I am growing were crossed with temperate corns in Hawaii in order to transfer the genes for flowering under long-day conditions.

A variety from Oaxaca that I grew for a few years flowered in September regardless of whether I planted it in early May or mid-July.

I think that it would be best to use a quick maturing northern variety as the mother and the Andean corn as the pollen donor...

I like the box idea to fake out the corn. In my case, closing the box would need to be automated.

[blueadzuki]

Before I go any deeper remember what I said about my policy with the Andean corn if you were assuming I could provide the purple seed. I have no problem sending you a handful of white or yellow, but you have to prove you can get ears (or at least produce pollen in a sufficient quantity and show the cross has taken and some genes have transferred before I will even THINK of providing seed with the purple inside gene.)

If you were looking for an outside source, I really have no clue, There are a fair number of colored Andean corns in the Baker creek explorer series but I don't think any of them are going to have purple insides. A lot have purple speckles or blotches on a white/yellow base but as I said, that pretty much means the inside is white or yellow (the rules seem to be it's always dark on light never light on dark same as most seeds (for example I tend to think that if you look at a bean that has black spots on a red base you seeing a red bean with black spots, but if you see a black bean with red spots, you're probably seeing a red bean with a black overcoating that has spot shaped HOLES in it.)

Probably best to start with flour for the other side, to more easily step down the kernel size (I have been told that corns auto size to the ear (that is, if you cross a big kerneled big eared corn to a little kerneled, little eared corn the resultant cross will be medium medium; there is no risk of getting a big ear with tiny kernels spaced miles apart because there is too much room for them, or an ear that explodes because it is trying to fit 200 kernels the size of nickles onto a cob that is the size of a little finger.) But I don't actually know for sure.

You'll probably want to avoid anything with a colored pericarp so you can see what is going on better, so no red, brown, or chinmark. you can mix those back in again later

The Andean stuff is already floury (really floury) so you mostly want to focus on a norther corn that is just as floury to minimize the hard starch. Normally I'd go for something like Navajo Robin's Egg (Native Seeds strain) as it is both very floury and surprisingly tolerable of a lot of environments. It's also a very round kerneled corn (I think the local term is bolo) which may be of importance down the road since the Andean stuff is sort of pointy sometimes (though it occurs to me that Strawberry is one of the most popular popcorns there is and it seems to pop fine with rice shaped kernels.) But since NRE is itself heavily patterned it might not be a good choice here. Picking a northern line that is pretty much pure white might make it easier to see where kernels have successfully crossed (if a kernel on the children is purple, it's more likely to have gotten it *.)

If you want to go straight to popcorn you'd need a non P type I guess. Otherwise same sort of rules apply

*one of the big disadvantages of the "can't grow it here itself is that the purple stuff can't be selfed to itself for a few seasons to try and make sure the base material is homozygous for the purple inside gene)