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#1
Legumes / Re: Sourcing Rare Commercial P...
Last post by Tarruvi - Yesterday at 04:17:16 PMChickpeas that can be popped sound super cool, thanks for sharing your experiences. I'll try again with GRIN, maybe it'll go differently.
#2
Legumes / Re: Sourcing Rare Commercial P...
Last post by Carol Deppe - Yesterday at 12:06:57 PMIt is legitimate for the GRIN system to refuse requests for commonly available varieties you could easily buy from a USA seed company. They don't have enough funding to provide free seed for everyone. However, they are supposed to be willing to send seed that isn't readily available to researchers.
Ideally we want an approach that allows you to just order seed when you want, without going through some organization.
Let's try this.
Send your order in. Say "These are rare materials that are not available from commercial seed companies. I am a member in good standing of Open Source Seed Initiative's Open Source Plant Breeding Forum (give link). I need the germplasm in my plant breeding work."
Let me know what happens in the OSSI section of this forum. (Just using the word 'germplasm' may be enough to convince them you are a plant breeder.) If that doesn't work I'll phone the legume curator and see if I can sort things out.
Carol
Ideally we want an approach that allows you to just order seed when you want, without going through some organization.
Let's try this.
Send your order in. Say "These are rare materials that are not available from commercial seed companies. I am a member in good standing of Open Source Seed Initiative's Open Source Plant Breeding Forum (give link). I need the germplasm in my plant breeding work."
Let me know what happens in the OSSI section of this forum. (Just using the word 'germplasm' may be enough to convince them you are a plant breeder.) If that doesn't work I'll phone the legume curator and see if I can sort things out.
Carol
#3
Legumes / Re: Sourcing Rare Commercial P...
Last post by Carol Deppe - Yesterday at 11:07:09 AMThe person in charge of the species at the specific branch of the germplasm repository does matter. I got nearly all the renaining stock of three rare native American corns from the head of the corn operation, about a pound of each, in exchange for having them grown in isolated valleys in the Oregon Coastal Mountains and returning five pounds of each. The corns in the depository had to be maintained by bagging and hand pollination, and those varieties didn't work well with that.
In another case, I called Rich Hannan, who was in charge of legumes, to ask for some nunas, P. vulgaris popbeans. He said "Why is everyone interested in vulgaris popbeans, which don't grow here, and nobody is interested in popping chickpeas, which do? The university guys just tell me 'What I'vd got a grant for is P. vulgaris."I don't have a grant for anything", I said. "Tell me about popping chickpeas." So he did. He knew there were popping varieties of chickpeas because someone from the middle east told him. but didn't know what accessions they were. The result was he sent me all the nunas plus a couple dozen chickpea accessions. I used the nunas to work out how to evaluate the popping characteristic with just a few seeds, a custard cup, and a microwave oven.Then a box with four hundred accessions of chickpeas and a note from Rich Hannan showed up at my front door. Rich had sent me one of the four copies of the core collection of chickpeas.
I figured out which ones popped. One of them grew nicely in Oregon but had maturity ranging from early summer to too late to mature, plant forms very variable, and very susceptible but variable to all the legume viruses we had. After a decade of simple selection I had nice uniform bushes that were completely resistant to the viruses. I named my new variety Hannan Popbean.
After a few more years, I started getting phone calls from academic vulgaris breeders who had F6es from crosses
they thought should give Northern adapted vulgaris popbeans, but didn't know how to tell which were popbeans. The phone calls would start with "Rich Hannan tells me you are the national expert on popping grain legumes...." So I would pass on my simple method of identifying popbeans.
A bit after that, I observed to Hannan, mournfully, that "now that that there are two or three other people working on them, I am probably not any longer the national expert on popping grain legumes." "That's probably right," he said. "But you are still the national expert on popping chickpeas."
In another case, I called Rich Hannan, who was in charge of legumes, to ask for some nunas, P. vulgaris popbeans. He said "Why is everyone interested in vulgaris popbeans, which don't grow here, and nobody is interested in popping chickpeas, which do? The university guys just tell me 'What I'vd got a grant for is P. vulgaris."I don't have a grant for anything", I said. "Tell me about popping chickpeas." So he did. He knew there were popping varieties of chickpeas because someone from the middle east told him. but didn't know what accessions they were. The result was he sent me all the nunas plus a couple dozen chickpea accessions. I used the nunas to work out how to evaluate the popping characteristic with just a few seeds, a custard cup, and a microwave oven.Then a box with four hundred accessions of chickpeas and a note from Rich Hannan showed up at my front door. Rich had sent me one of the four copies of the core collection of chickpeas.
I figured out which ones popped. One of them grew nicely in Oregon but had maturity ranging from early summer to too late to mature, plant forms very variable, and very susceptible but variable to all the legume viruses we had. After a decade of simple selection I had nice uniform bushes that were completely resistant to the viruses. I named my new variety Hannan Popbean.
After a few more years, I started getting phone calls from academic vulgaris breeders who had F6es from crosses
they thought should give Northern adapted vulgaris popbeans, but didn't know how to tell which were popbeans. The phone calls would start with "Rich Hannan tells me you are the national expert on popping grain legumes...." So I would pass on my simple method of identifying popbeans.
A bit after that, I observed to Hannan, mournfully, that "now that that there are two or three other people working on them, I am probably not any longer the national expert on popping grain legumes." "That's probably right," he said. "But you are still the national expert on popping chickpeas."
#4
Legumes / Re: Sourcing Rare Commercial P...
Last post by reed - Yesterday at 09:09:34 AMI haven't gotten anything from them for a while. The first time I asked for a specific corn variety for a specific trait it carried and explained what I hoped to do with it. They asked me to document and photograph and to send them a report, which I did. Next time they just sent the seeds with no follow up requests, but I sent them a report each time. That was for some corn. I've been told that a lot is up to whoever is in charge of the species in question, the corn people, at the time, were easy to work with.
#5
Legumes / Re: Sourcing Rare Commercial P...
Last post by Tarruvi - Yesterday at 01:19:59 AMQuote from: Carol Deppe on 2026-10-06, 09:15:34 PMWhat is the problem getting seed from the Grin system?
If the Grin system is cutting farmer-breeders or other independent plant breeders or citizen researchers off from access to its collections, that is something OSSI would want to know and try to do something about. Tell me about it.
In the past few years I made a few requests on accessions, some pea strains with traits I wanted to integrate within my breeding projects. On the GRIN website, they do have a notification saying something along the lines of rejecting requests if there is a conflict of interest with commercial enterprises, or the germplasm that is requested can be bought on the market. I'm not a fan of that former part about competing with commercial enterprises, considering the whole point of GRIN is to accrue and distribute genetically diverse materials. And on the last part, I made sure to request accessions I haven't seen available in any seed catalogues.
I made an outline of using the germplasm in breeding projects I'm currently working on, and sharing the results with peers and the public. That statement worked once, all other and similar statements were rejected. But even then, I think the acception had to do with the timing. Why I say that, is because a year or so ago is when the USDA had that incident with the US government threatening jobs. Not long after that, is when my second and only request to get approved was sent to me.
I'm not familiar with the ins and outs of GRIN or the USDA, so I can't say for certain if my requests were inappropriate uses or not. It all is a big headache, and why I'd rather buy a variety from someone on the opposite side of the earth than have to deal with their system.
#6
Legumes / Re: Sourcing Rare Commercial P...
Last post by William Schlegel - 2026-10-06, 09:23:32 PMThe Going to Seed group is starting to aggregate germplasm requests. I think that is a good idea- OSSI could do the same thing, or join with Going to Seed in a larger effort. Though international issues are more complex.
#7
Legumes / Re: Sourcing Rare Commercial P...
Last post by Carol Deppe - 2026-10-06, 09:15:34 PMWhat is the problem getting seed from the Grin system?
If the Grin system is cutting farmer-breeders or other independent plant breeders or citizen researchers off from access to its collections, that is something OSSI would want to know and try to do something about. Tell me about it.
Carol
Carol Deppe PhD, Chair
Board of Directors,
OSSI
If the Grin system is cutting farmer-breeders or other independent plant breeders or citizen researchers off from access to its collections, that is something OSSI would want to know and try to do something about. Tell me about it.
Carol
Carol Deppe PhD, Chair
Board of Directors,
OSSI
#8
Sweet Potatoes / Re: Breeding Sweet Potatoes (t...
Last post by Carol Deppe - 2026-10-06, 08:46:50 PMIt would be really cool if you can figure out which plants are self-compatible. Especially if any of your culinary lines are. And selfing such a line would certainly give you a greater percent of seed that give offspring similar to the parent than crossing to something else.
I agree that even with recurrent selfing a sweet potato plant would likely be nowhere near breeding true for very much for a long time if ever. Not with six copies of each chromosome.
I agree that even with recurrent selfing a sweet potato plant would likely be nowhere near breeding true for very much for a long time if ever. Not with six copies of each chromosome.
#10
Tinkering / Re: Joining the Forum
Last post by William Schlegel - 2026-10-06, 04:29:07 PMDon't use quick reply. Go to user options and hit reply. Then upload a file. For example here is a photo of my tomato line #303 when I was seed saving some fruit from it recently.