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If you look closely at sweet corn, you will find that it is always in a background of a "flint" type corn.  Dent type corn has soft starch near the core which turns out to reduce sweetness when combined with the usual sweet genes.  If you go back a very long way, the original su sweet corn was grown by the Iroquois who happened to grow flint type corn.  But the story does not end there as the mutation for su has also occurred anywhere corn has been grown if grown long enough.

Interesting DarJones. Do you know what happens when a four corn has the sweet genes?

@Tim: it makes sense to take into account the workload of setting up the poles. What I meant with having a fair comparison: imagine below are tall and broad-leaved (T) and short (s) climbers in a trial, each having its individual pole.

TTT
TsT
TTT

Plant "s" will be disadvantaged if sunlight is the limiting factor and the others (T) are shading it out. This is the reason I suggested making trials in bigger areas, then you can also only measure the ones in the middle.

@Cathy: the "haricot tarbais", from France, is one pole bean variety used as dried beans. It was traditionally cultivated on maize, and still is by some farmers. It was a landrace, but recently one line was selected out of it, "Alaric", reducing the diversity.

Thanks Joseph and William. I am looking into goingtoseeds.org, although I might be too late for next year.

Hi,

breeding takes time, and the starting point, the diversity generation by crossing, is quite difficult in some species. Is there a way to get a financing for the diversity generation? For example at the condition that it is open source?

Thanks for any insights

Hi, interesting results, thanks!

I however wonder if the productivity per plant is meaningful, as the growth habit of each plant is different. Would it not make more sense to assess the productivity per square meter in a bigger field?

Because with climbing beans, the taller the plant, and the larger the leaves, the more area is exposed to the sun, and therefore it can produce more beans per plant. But if you have a whole field of tall, large leaved plants, you need to space them more, and therefore the productivity is not necessarily higher per area.

I have sucessfully used hydrogen peroxide to germinate bean seeds. I don't know if it would also work with peppers, and if yes, the ideal concentration.

Thanks Jeremy, I have also noticed the wrinkled seeds and wondered if it was due to incomplete development of the seed, or something similar to sweet corn, that starch was not developped

Hi,
I am interested in a tepary (Phaseolus acutifolius) population. I got some "black mitla" among others, but they look more like Phaseolus vulgaris.

Does anyone know if there is a way to differentiate between the species based on seeds only? Or does anyone know other differentiating traits other than the leaf angle?

Hi,
I have just seen this video about a luffa growing company
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktsQ0l5a7xg

Not a fan of a monopoly with patented cuts, but their luffas look really huge!

Great to see that someone is starting on cold-hardy bananas!

Emily, if I may: I think if you want to achieve all the mentioned points you listed at the same time it will take forever, which is a great life goal

For example: your point 1 and point 3 are each on on their own strategies to get bananas in zone 7b, there is no need to combine them.

I do not understand your point 9: each sucker which grows produces a bunch (or not, but let's ignore that) and then dies back, leaving the space to the next suckers.

You may also be interested in this vegetative propagation method, with which you can make 50 healthy banana plants out of one sucker:
https://www.accessagriculture.org/producing-healthy-plantain-and-banana-suckers
This allows you to avoid having to breed for frequent pupping and still achieve the same reproduction rate.

I will read your thread with high interest

Jeremy Weiss: I also found a huge Luffa cylindrica in India which had white seeds inside. Otherwise it looked the same as the black seeded ones, and it was definitively ripe.

Someone managed to get ripe fruits of a luffa outdoors in a colder climate? Here in central Europe, even if it was one of the hottest summers, almost in the polytunnel, but started a bit too late and with a sunburn. I also need to find day length adapted varieties for here, if anyone has a source...

Hi, I speak german, and wouln't mind having a german plant breeding forum as well. However, I would hate an automatic translation of posts, because it often messes with the meaning, especially if it is a specific topic like plant breeding.

Patrick, I see that you have already a website, why don't you add a forum in there?

Yes, adblocks ABP for example

I have the same error message, but am using firefox. It does not login automatically.

ICARDA crossed several hundred wheat varieties with each other as an experiment on evolutionary plant breeding. Maybe you can get your hands on some of this genetic material?
There are winter and summer populations now, some are dark green in the rainier areas, some are silvery blue-green in dryer areas, evolution is at works. Especially if you are interested in disease resistance as well.

You can find several articles by searching "evolutionary wheat populations" for example, or articles by Salvatore Ceccarelli and some wheat keywords.