choosing pea parents for taste

[diane]

I've decided to put more thought into pea breeding this time, so I'm sitting surrounded by all my packets of seeds. I've read about them online,
and have spent the last three days re-reading all pea-breeding messages and blogs. I've also peeked into the packets and noted which have
wrinkled seeds.

It is not so easy to find out if the pods taste good, and I haven't read any suggestion that there is a linkage.

Almost all of my seeds are pods and snows, but Rebsie wrote that a shelling pea, Gravedigger, is perhaps the best-tasting pea she has ever eaten.
"A richness and sophistication of taste rather than just a high sugar content...... burstingly juicy to boot."

Well, I'd better use that one, but I haven't found a source. I wonder if it is offered in SSE.

Here are my wrinkled seeds, which will be sweet:
Cascadia, June's Delight, Opal Creek, Oregon Giant, Oregon Hypertendril Snow Bush, Rae, Sugar Lace Snap, Sugar Snap, Sweet Elma
Green Beauty Snow has a few seeds that are almost wrinkled, so maybe I should pick them out and sow them separately.

What about good tasting pods? The packets of Opal Creek, Oregon Giant and Oregon Sugar Pod II promise that, but are there others?

Apparently purple pods don't taste good, or are there some that do?

Well, not too bad. I've sorted my packets, and there are only ten that have nothing good said about them.

[raymondo]

To my palate, flavour really only develops as the peas develop. Unfortunately, for a number of snow peas, this also means that the parchment layer(s) develop and the pod starts to toughen. As far pods themselves go, I haven't really tried that many but of those I have, I would say Melting Mammoth, Oregon Giant in snows and Cascadia in snaps are my favourites.
I find that the purple pods, in both peas and beans, have a slight off taste when used raw which I don't care for. Cooking seems to remove it but like peas and beans in salads raw.

[steve1]

My two cents worth, Oregon Sugar Pod wasn't bad - supposed to be dual purpose snow and sheller though I haven't used it as a sheller... But has multiple disease resistances for Oregon where it was bred. So many ticks but not applicable to every location.
If you have one good non parchment gene, it seems enough- but if you are trying for a pea that eats well when pods are relatively mature you have to select late to avoid late parchment formation. I've got a few shows now that are good to eat when seeds are developed but before pod senesces.
I find sugar snap quite palatable, as do a number of people I've fed it too but can't comment on many other cultivars.
It seems purple pea pigments are high in glycosides. From some canola work, I know glycosides are actively screened and selected against for bitter flavors in oils.
Not sure that this helps...

Cheers
Steve

[templeton]

Diane,
flavour can be a hard to pin down characteristic. Human genetics comes into it- people like different things, and actuslly taste things differently. Different cultures have different taste preferences - the attractiveness, and desired levels of salt and sugar and bitterness seems to be culturally driven. All this is a long way of saying that you should probably grow a few different varieties, with you usual horticultural techniques (because plant nutrition alters taste) and see what you like, and start with that. And almost anything you grow yourself always tastes better too.

[diane]

It just occurred to me - last year I grew pea shoots and they tasted just like peas to me. Now I can't remember whether they tasted like
raw peas, but probably, because that's what I've spent a lifetime eating, and only a couple of decades eating pods. (raw asparagus tastes
like raw peas to me, too).

So there is flavour in the leaves. Maybe I should concentrate on leaves - they are ready to eat much sooner than pods or peas.

[keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.)]

Jan 16, 2016 11:54:23 GMT -5 diane said:

It just occurred to me - last year I grew pea shoots and they tasted just like peas to me. Now I can't remember whether they tasted like
raw peas, but probably, because that's what I've spent a lifetime eating, and only a couple of decades eating pods. (raw asparagus tastes
like raw peas to me, too).

So there is flavour in the leaves. Maybe I should concentrate on leaves - they are ready to eat much sooner than pods or peas.

That's probably not a bad idea. I've heard that pea tendrils are often used in stir-frys and salads. Some people like Calvin Lamborn are working on breeding better ones for that already. The "Parsley Pea" is a unique type because it has the Hyper-tendril/semi-leafless trait combined with the tendril-less trait. In effect it produces a tuft of leaves similar in appearance to parsley. The Parsley Pea variety however is an old one, so it could probably use some breeding effort. Alan Kapuler used it originally when he bred his purple-podded snap pea Sugar Magnolia. You could probably request some of these types from Peace Seeds or Peace Seedlings directly if you want (i'm fairly certain they have plenty). But sometimes they show up randomly years later. This past summer one of these types showed up in my Sugar Magnolia growout. I didn't save separate seed for it, but i was pleased since Sugar Magnolia grows in my climate much better than the parsley pea. In fact the parsley pea grew so poorly for me it has already been eliminated from my garden by natural selection. I'm not sure if the sugar genes for pods and seeds will affect the flavor of the leaves, but i figure it couldn't hurt.

You can see some good photos of it here:
www.facebook.com/eatmorepeas

Apparently purple pods don't taste good, or are there some that do?

hmm... hard question to answer. Not many purple podded peas have good genetics at this point. That doesn't mean it will be that way forever though. Having said that the two best varieties so far are Sugar Magnolia and Midnight Snow.

[templeton]

Re purple pod flavours - i grew out one of my purple podded projects in bulk this year, and while it tasted a bit different to the yellow podded next to it, it was not unpleasant. Some purples (and yellows and greens for that matter) i have grown along the way in my breeding project, have chalky or odd flavours. But nothing like the strength of rocket or mustards, for example. We aren't talking spitters, mearely not topnotch. I tried Shiraz a week or two ago, and found it indifferent in flavour. My purple snows are much better . So its not too difficult to breed stuff better than the big boys like Thompson and Morgan. Just takes time and some room.
T

[diane]

Yes, and the good thing about peas is that I can get three crops a year from them. Or maybe just from the early ones.

[steve1]

diane the It's worth noting that breeders in general don't like selecting for taste till rather late at around F5, which from memory gives you around 95% homozygosity (for inbreeding crops) and so a reasonable amount of stability. Saying that you can select earlier for other traits, and also grow out superior tasting lines as well and toss junk. From Calvin Lamborns work on the parsley peas, I recall reading the foliage is tasty but the pea pods themselves not much. Expression of compounds in the leaves and pods may be separately controlled.
Cheers

[templeton]

Quick turnover of generations is really helpful. If i get my timing right, i can get F1 seed mid - late spring, and since i really only need a moderate amount of F2 seed, I can grow it in a good year in early summer, an otherwise marginal time for peas. Since I'm not selecting in the F1, it doesnt matter if they aren't premium, as long as i get a moderate amount of growable seed off them.
I wish i had been more thoughtful about the parent stock. Depending on what your target is, you could even start with one of the colored peas as parent, and if you really want to, perform multiple backcrosses to your more desired parent line. I've just started a project doing this at the moment.

[philagardener]

The late approach makes a lot of sense if a breeder were able to grow out large numbers (expanding the original cross) to screen as many genetic combinations in the F5 as possible. That way, as pointed out, once they find something good it is likely to stay that way.

If one has more limited resources, following a trait that emerges early to focus the search makes things more manageable at the risk of missing out on the potential of multigenic interactions (since one is reducing diversity in the genes pool).

The least likely way to succeed would be to simply screen small numbers of late generation individuals since a lot of the diversity of the original cross might have been lost at that point.  Unless you have a lot of luck 

[philagardener]

Jan 17, 2016 6:57:58 GMT -5 templeton said:

Quick turnover of generations is really helpful. If i get my timing right, i can get F1 seed mid - late spring, and since i really only need a moderate amount of F2 seed, I can grow it in a good year in early summer, an otherwise marginal time for peas. Since I'm not selecting in the F1, it doesnt matter if they aren't premium, as long as i get a moderate amount of growable seed off them.
I wish i had been more thoughtful about the parent stock. Depending on what your target is, you could even start with one of the colored peas as parent, and if you really want to, perform multiple backcrosses to your more desired parent line. I've just started a project doing this at the moment.

Yes, they always say you should choose your parents carefully

[templeton]

it's hard to go past carol deppe's advice in Breed your own veges.
I've got limited space, so can't do huge screening growouts.
I just started writing a post about my selection strategies, but realised they change depending on whether the traits are dom or reccessive, how much room I've got, and what has turned up. That's why carol took a whole book to explain it

[ferdzy]

I too want to get my hot little hands on "gravedigger" thanks to Rebsie's recommendation. I also agree that Sugar Magnolia is a very decently flavoured purple podded snap pea. Amish Snap is such an excellent snap pea that I have looked no further amongst the snap peas.

[keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.)]

I think gravedigger is a variety that is currently only available in England from the Heritage Seed Library. But there are a few people on this forum who are nice enough to try to go out of their way and might send you some if you ask (maybe galina or robertb ?). That's how i originally got Shiraz and Bijou. Both fared poorly, so i really don't grow them anymore. This year Bijou is mixed into Carouby De Maussane and i will just select for whatever grows best of that type, but i am also growing a competitor from the Kapulers named Green Beauty so it may or may not replace both of those.

Amish Snap seemed to have ok snap pods, but it was consistently one of the worst growing peas in my garden that it has now been selected out by natural selection. I will not grow it again. I'm sure there are other snap peas that will fare better in my climate. I have yet to trial snap peas specifically yet, but i am trialing one a year. Last year i tried Sugar Daddy Bush, this year i'm trying Sugaree (another Kapuler bred variety).

I think this year i will try to pay more attention to pod fiber. There was another thread with a discussion of ppvv fiberless genetics. I too would like to know how to identify a ppvv pod versus a ppVV or a PPvv pod that only has one set of fiberless genes as i'm a little confused about that. A few years back i grew Dwarf Gray Sugar from the Seed Savers Exchange and found that 80% had non-constricted pods and some that had constricted pods. I decided i wanted the constricted pod version to have for mendelian genetics nostalgia and so i only saved seed from those. I found out later that i may have inadvertently selected for the fiberless "pulverise to dust" trait. Not sure if that means these are ppvv and have two fiberless genes or only one.