Potato Onion Resurrection

[A. Pel]

Some interesting things have been happening with my Potato Onion Project. To better document things, the project has been moved to its own website (plantal.net: Plant Alchemy) and the content has been completely re-written.

Here is the main link: https://plantal.net/PotatoOnions.html

The project is called Potato Onion Resurrection. The word "Resurrection" is used in the project name because rather than attempting to convince the few existing Potato Onions to set seed, the breeding method works with modern biennial onions and essentially re-activates the latent splitty, clumping genes they contain. In the process, the formerly biennial onions have effectively become perennial. The Breeding Methodology page discusses this process in some detail:

https://plantal.net/PotatoOnionBreeding.html

I am starting to get results. There are some images below, but I feel that one of the most important results is not the bulbs themselves - but the seed stock. The project has now developed a seed stock of extremely diverse onions that enthusiastically set seed and most (about 75%) of the resulting offspring will readily split.

All results are Open Source.

The Ariel 3 Named Line


The Juliet 7 Named Line


The Phoebe 5 Named Line

[Carol Deppe]

Fascinating project!

Is seed of your named lines available in the USA?

Following back to early history of your project, is it true that the beginning was when you let some material derived from potato onions cross with modern commercial biennial onions with everything you are working with now derived cytoplasmically from potato onions?

One sometimes finds an occassional onion of just about any modern biennial variety with an onion that has split inside the wrapper leaves. What happens if you plant those? Can you select potato onions out of "pure" op varieties? I am thinking it would be nice to have potato onion lines that produced seed that gave you the same type of onion as the onion it came from instead of a big diversity.

It's possible that the the individual onions in modern biennial op varieties that show separate onions inside the wrappers are genetically different from the others, because there really aren't seriously pure varieties of onions. My understanding, personal communication from Irwin Goldman, plant breeder at University of Wisconsin-Madison and specialist in root crops such as carrots, beets, and onions, is the biennial root crops really hate being genetically homogeneous. So much so that even the "inbred lines" used to create commercial hybrids actually have a good bit of genetic heterogeneity in them. So it's possible that the double onions inside husks in common biennial op  varieties have a genetic cause and could be selected for to produce potato onions whose seed reproduced the type of the bulb.

I also wonder if you have done any selection of your material for scallions, use of the entire small onions including greens.

[A. Pel]

>Is seed of your named lines available in the USA?

Not from the Named Lines - I have never let them run to seed. I do have some 2025 seed from the Base Group left and am in the process of collecting the 2026 seed. I cannot send actual bulbs to the US (I am in the UK) but I can send some of that seed. Realistically, I don't think it will matter much if the seed came from the Named Lines or the Base Group - if the base group seed is planted out and culled as per the breeding methodology then, in about 2 or 3 years, Potato Onions equal to or better than my Named Lines should be present. The Named Lines I have now actually originate from seed harvested in 2023 - and the gene pool has improved since then.

If anyone would like seed please register your interest by sending a note to the email address on the page: https://plantal.net/About.html. No need to include personal details such as addresses just yet. Once I get the seed in I will send an email and we can work out how to get the seed to you.

>Following back to early history of your project, is it true that the beginning was when you let some material derived from potato onions cross with modern commercial biennial onions with everything you are working with now derived cytoplasmically from potato onions?

That is certainly possible but it is my belief that their genes are probably not the source of most of the splitty, clumping behaviour. In the early days, while I was trying to get the Potato Onions to work I was also Promiscuously Pollinating modern biennial onions together in an project to breed long keeping, long storing onions. Occasionally I would see splitty, clumping behaviour in some of the F2, F3.. generations there and separate them out. There were no heirloom Potato Onions in that mix. So, I guess the heirloom Potato Onion genes could be in the Base Group but I don't think they were the primary source of the Potato Onion-y behaviours. Given their reluctance to set seed I imagine their genetic contribution was modest - at best.

>One sometimes finds an occassional onion of just about any modern biennial variety with an onion that has split inside the wrapper leaves. What happens if you plant those? 

The onion will likely split. I have no idea what happens if the onions of the same type are crossed together. I suspect a certain percentage of the future generations would be increasingly Potato Onion-y.

>Can you select potato onions out of "pure" op varieties? I am thinking it would be nice to have potato onion lines that produced seed that gave you the same type of onion as the onion it came from instead of a big diversity.

I really don't know - all of my efforts were directed towards injecting diversity into the gene pool. The thinking was that anything that looked interesting could be propagated vegetatively and I would never need to worry about true-ing them up.

>It's possible that the the individual onions in modern biennial op varieties that show separate onions inside the wrappers are genetically different from the others, because there really aren't seriously pure varieties of onions. My understanding, personal communication from Irwin Goldman, plant breeder at University of Wisconsin-Madison and specialist in root crops such as carrots, beets, and onions, is the biennial root crops really hate being genetically homogeneous. So much so that even the "inbred lines" used to create commercial hybrids actually have a good bit of genetic heterogeneity in them. So it's possible that the double onions inside husks in common biennial op  varieties have a genetic cause and could be selected for to produce potato onions whose seed reproduced the type of the bulb.

That is very interesting and does correlate well with my, admittedly, anecdotal experience.

>I also wonder if you have done any selection of your material for scallions, use of the entire small onions including greens.

Every year I get some onions in the Category 1 group which are small and salad onion like. I keep them separate and plant them out in the hopes of getting a nice bunchy scallion/salad onion cultivar. So far, nothing very interesting has appeared in the second year. Here's hoping :-)
[/quote]