Over the past three years, I have begun an attempt to breed common lamb's quarters for improved germination rate and increased seed quality. This year, I only got one out of several hundred seeds to sprout after soaking the seeds in water over night. The resulting plant yielded about 100 g of seeds depending on how much chaff was left over after winnowing. If seed yields like this are consistent for every plant, then I would expect grain yields to approach at least half that of maize when planted at the recommended density for quinoa. Here is a link to a video where I harvest the seeds:
https://www.bitchute.com/video/C8wvK9MkS9FU/
In spite of the impressive seed yield for this plant, most of the seeds were not even 1.0 millimeter in diameter from the one plant that sprouted. Strangely, I found much larger seeds from a weedy plant that sprouted out of one of my compost piles nearby. Most of the seeds from this wild plant were the typical 0.75 to 1.0 millimeters in diameter, but a few hundred seeds were at least 1.5 millimeters in diameter since they frequently got stuck in my sieve while I was attempting to remove the chaff from them. Hoping that this trait would carry on to the next generation, I saved these exceptionally large seeds in a packet to plant again next year. I'm hoping a plant with larger seeds will have a more consistent germination rate, be easier to winnow, and have a higher value as a grain crop.
Only in the past four years have I discovered that common lamb's quarters is closely related to quinoa. There is very little information available about growing quinoa online, but there is some agreement that quinoa has a poor tolerance of heat compared with other lamb's quarter species and amaranth. Since common wild lamb's quarters grows wild in North America and thrives well into the heat of summer, I'm assuming it can be bred into a heat-tolerant alternative to quinoa to grow for it's seeds as well as its nutritious greens.
