The difficulty of finding and working with collaborators

[UnicornEmily]

Alas, that's often the story with most of my seeds, I buy (or find) way more than I can grow each year, so the backlog builds up year after year until, when I finally DO get to them, they've died from old age.

Man, that stinks.  Can storing it in the freezer help?

But on the flip side, every time I try and spread some of the stuff around to speed things up, I usually hit any of many walls from other growers, they want to focus on their things only, they have radically different ideas of where they want the project to go and the methods to be used. Their methods mean that any reasonable sample I could give them just gets lost immediately (this is a big problem with corn, where I can supply maybe ten or twenty kernels and they're tossing them into several pounds worth because they grow their corn on a multi acre scale and mass select from there. And when this happens a lot say it's MY fault for not giving them enough of a sample to make a difference in their project, and demand I turn over ALL the seed I have.)

There is also the fact that, since a lot of people will only give you seed of what you want if you can give them new seed they want and don't have, I have to hoard my swapping opportunities carefully. Since pretty much anyone can more or less instantly make more of any seed I provide than I can, and therefore share it down the line much more readily (in some cases, taking advantage of that fact to claim credit for discovering or creating it in the first place, so I basically get one shot per type of seed. I HATE having to think so selfishly, but the alternative is to basically wind up in a state where I always incur all of the costs, and someone else always gets all of the benefits.     

That's really rough.  Maybe it would help to find one particular friend you can trust and depend on to grow things out for you, and share credit with you if it goes well?

If you have a very good eye for finding interesting seeds, and there's often a risk of losing them (either to animals or to old age) without getting any new ones back, it seems to me that a friend with a reasonable growing space may be able to devote a bit of their land to growing out whatever weird things you've found that year, and send you back some of the seeds.  And they could do whatever they wanted with the rest.  That may be a good partnership for everyone concerned.

[Jeremy Weiss]

Man, that stinks.  Can storing it in the freezer help?

That's really rough.  Maybe it would help to find one particular friend you can trust and depend on to grow things out for you, and share credit with you if it goes well?

If you have a very good eye for finding interesting seeds, and there's often a risk of losing them (either to animals or to old age) without getting any new ones back, it seems to me that a friend with a reasonable growing space may be able to devote a bit of their land to growing out whatever weird things you've found that year, and send you back some of the seeds.  And they could do whatever they wanted with the rest.  That may be a good partnership for everyone concerned.

That would be GREAT, IF I could find such a person. But such a person has yet to arrive. My growing cousin is only interested in things he can eat, so he's no good Plus he is so in love with his Hooker's (the CORN, not the profession!) it is guaranteed he will grow it every year, so not a safe place.

Most other corn people I know have their own mass projects and, in addition, have goals fully based on maximum nutritional yield, so not only don't want to grow my stuff, but want me to abandon my stuff to grow THIER stuff to benefit THEM (when I tried on the EFN forum, the only responses I got were one's basically calling me an idiot for even WANTING to preserve and propagate the corns I am working with. They also pointed out the offensiveness of trying to use a Native American name for the project when I am not Native American, but that, at least, is a valid criticism).

That's part of the problem, the vast majority of the things I try and do are interesting from a purely botanical, genetic, or taxonomic POV, but do nothing, or are even detrimental from an actual food consumption point. Miniature non-popcorn may be FUN, and interesting, and possibly a nice addition to the ornamental market, but it wouldn't have any advantages in terms of yield of actual cornmeal (in fact, it would be INFERIOR to cornmeal from larger kernels, since the laws of increase of volume versus surface area as size goes up mean that, the smaller the corn kernels, the more pericarp (hull, the stuff on the outside you can't actually digest) goes up, as does the amount of germ per endosperm (so it would be oilier), And, even after you niximitized it to make it into hominy, and it was pure starch, it would be the exact same amount of flour per volume, so no advantage (though, if you were cooking the hominy whole, it might cook quicker).

Ditto the non corn. Growing non red azuki's and rice beans may be preserving rare genetic variants, but since the market wants red, and ONLY red, I'm unlikely to change many thousands of years of tradition and culture just by myself.) Ditto the mung beans, people are USED to green, why would they want another color (it's not like the seed coats even factor IN to any of the commonest uses for them, they're gone by the time they are turned into dal, beansprouts, or bean flour.) 

I don't think I've had a marketable seed breeding idea since the wrinkled soybean one, and that one never got off the ground due to lack of material (and the fact I didn't have the proper academic clearances  for affordable access to scientific journals to find out the answer to the fundamental questions on which the whole idea was based, so I couldn't tell if I was wasting my time.) 

There actually is ANOTHER method I might be able to use when and if my therapist and psychiatrist can find the appropriate regiment of treatment to get me to the state where passing my driving test and getting my license is feasible. If I could drive, there is an experimental farm very near me that would probably be GLAD to hire me, and would most likely be more than willing to open their (substantial) amounts of land and labor to help the projects if I could convince them there was a way to effectively monetize some of them (with colorful corn, the best idea is grow the crop, skim the best 10% or so off for next year's seed, then sell the rest during the fall at the farmer's market stands and such.)     

[UnicornEmily]

Ahhh, I see.  Yeah, if you have very different goals from most growers and/or plant breeders, that makes it hard to find a partner to work with.

I think a rainbow of different adzuki bean colors would have an excellent chance of finding interested growers.  Same for mung beans.  A lot of people love growing beans precisely because they can get a rainbow of interesting colors to look at.  And landrace gardeners would also favor different colors because of how much promising genetic diversity they'd contain.

[Jeremy Weiss]

Ahhh, I see.  Yeah, if you have very different goals from most growers and/or plant breeders, that makes it hard to find a partner to work with.

I think a rainbow of different adzuki bean colors would have an excellent chance of finding interested growers.  Same for mung beans.  A lot of people love growing beans precisely because they can get a rainbow of interesting colors to look at.  And landrace gardeners would also favor different colors because of how much promising genetic diversity they'd contain.

If we were talking the Western World, sure. But the main  market for mungs and azuki's is Asia, and Asia doesn't really think like that. The want red because red is a lucky color, and because most of the uses they have for azuki bean RELY on that red color.

Plus, when cooked, a lot of them don't look nearly as nice. Browns and tans just look dirty. I've never had enough black to cook any, but since the black is really very, very extreme purple, I imagine that when cooked and ground up the resultant bean past would be lavender (which is nice enough, but carries no cultural significance).

The ONLY non red I have ever heard of commercially  was some vague references to a white strain grown for chefs who wanted to "hide" bean paste (have people taste it but not see it) in their dishes.

The other problem is that, due to no one wanting them, the non-red tend to have had less breeding or selection done to them, so they'd fail in the modern market due to size. Out of all of the ones I have, only the salt and pepper is anything like the size of an industry "normal" Azuki. The black ones are the size of a "small" which some places still sell at a discount. Everything else is WAY below the industry seed size, ranging from mung bean sized to at least one whose seed is so tiny that, had I not been committed to checking EVERTHING, I would have tossed out its equally tiny pod as being an obviously aborted one.)

Older ones may also have higher amount of distasteful or even dangerous compounds that have been bred out of later selections. I know people use wild soybean in some hair products, but no one would consider EATING it.

More than the compounds is shattering (pods exploding when they are ripe). The farther back you go, the higher the likelihood they still have that. Hasn't happened with the Azuki's, but I had a near thing with a rice bean plant whose pod literally exploded when I touched it. These are are treated as field crops, so no one wants one that isn't going to hold it's seed until the rest catch up.

With the mungs, sort of the same thing. Most of the variants are in the smaller seeded population. And since no one uses the seed coats anyway, their color is probably not a priority, sort of like the green cotyledon soybeans (you generally won't find green cots in white skinned beans, since those are destined for tofu, and tofu is supposed to be snow white). But finding them in black or brown skinned ones is quite common, since those get turned into soy sauce and black bean sauce, and, in the fermentation everything is going to turn brown anyway. There are also ones that are green in both cots AND skin, but I don't know what they are used for (I haven't seen a lot of them for sale.) Anything goes for Japanese ones destined for edamame as well, since you eat those green and unripe anyway.   

[Kadence Luneman]

I think this is an interesting point in plant breeding. One person can only do so much and may have limited space.

Where I'm at now I am interested in trying new things but I'm not interested in, say putting seeds of every single squash variety together I can find for a grex. I'm not interested in every single squash. I'm not in an area that the soil or climate is too extreme to need lots of beginning input to find the few that will work.

Much like with my sheep. I don't have pure breed sheep. But having pure bred sheep is incredibly important for genetic preservation. Unlike dogs, I'm not saying we have to keep the pugs and the bulldogs that have sinus problems they can hardly breathe and pelvis that can't deliver pups. No, I mean the Scottish blackface that have survived in the highlands on their own every winter for so many years. Breeds that developed in areas that work in the weather and terrain. Like that. Not the pony sized show sheep or the tiny dainty pet and show shetland sheep that are about as useful as a pug and maybe even less meat on them.

Anyhow.. That is to say, we definitely need the varieties around of certain gene resistant to whatever etc and people to keep growing them. I'm just not the person to do it.

This is something I've thought about because after a couple years with my squash, for example, it would be really interesting to have someone like Joseph or William etc.. Someone with a drier climate, someone with a wetter climate, a colder climate, a hotter climate,... And get seed back from them to see what that has turned into compared to what was just grown here. Can I gain some traits? Did it lose some traits?
But.. I will have to consider it and what the other person is growing. What other squash are they growing that could pollinate with my line and come back to me? Is it traits that I want?

Being as I'm at the beginning of this adventure it's only things to think about for the future for now.

[UnicornEmily]

I like your point about the importance of maintaining locally adapted breeds, Kadence.  It shouldn't be about keeping things inbred for the sake of being inbred, but instead about maintaining valuable traits that are perfectly adapted to a specific location or purpose.  I think what you're describing is the original definition of "landrace."

(Which is highly connected to the modern definition of "landrace," and is probably what most landrace gardeners are trying to reach -- it's just that everything is so inbred that we have to start with a hybrid swarm to get the genetic diversity to breed something perfectly adapted to a specific place.)

I'm planning to start a seeded banana landrace this spring (should I make a thread about it?), and the constraints of my growing space are a serious concern.  I have seriously considered asking my next-door neighbor if she wants some free banana plants, so I can use some of her yard to expand my population's genetic diversity.  (Laugh.)  I may ask next year, if I get viable seeds from my yard and have plenty to share.  That may be a win-win.

I've already asked her if she wants some free seeds for yummy squash varieties this year.    She was like, "Yes!"  I figure since her plants are bound to spread pollen to mine, it benefits me just as much as her for her to have tasty, locally adapted plants.  Growing as a community for the win.