Speckled corn

[Mike Deyo]

I started trying corn breeding back in the 80's. My first cross was between two white seeded corns, Mohawk Hominy from J.L.Hudson, and Virginia Gourdseed from SESE. The Mohawk corn was short, early, weak stalks, ears very low on stalk, 8 row with large seeds. The groundhogs loved it! The Viginia Gourdseed was tall, late, strong stalks, ears held high on stalk, short ears, 16 rows, great husks for protection. For several years I selected for medium tall, medium maturity, good husks and stalks, adaption to Ohio climate. It went well, but it was a bit boring. I decided to mix in some colorful Mexican corns from Native Seed/SEARCH, and Blue Claridge from SSE. There was a period of adjustment, as there were good genes from the Mexican corn, but also unadapted ones (too late, poor dry down, weak stalks, kernels cracking on the sides). I noticed one of the Mexican corns had some speckled seeds, and saw that turning up in my hybrid population. I've been selecting for ears that have the highest proportion of speckled seeds over the years, and now I get some ears that are more than 90% speckled. I did some research, and found the speckled seeds may be due to jumping genes, does anyone have experience with that? It may or may not be possible to get just speckled ears. I still get solid purple seeds, although most ears have at least some speckled seeds. I've just been interested in using it for cornmeal, so I haven't been picky about grain type, some are dent, some have no dent on the kernel.

I found I have some grain moths in my seed from 2022, so I've been going through and freezing it. I took a few pictures of seed from individual ears from that year. The plant in image 0422 had two ears.