OSSI breeding funding

[William Schlegel]

OSSI's latest email newsletter mentions the possibility of OSSI grants in the future. That could be a help.

[AndrewB]

I like the idea, but is there help for those of us who have a variety ready to pledge but need someone else to grow them out and increase seed? I have a pea variety ready to go, but I'm working on other projects.

[William Schlegel]

I don't know. It just says requests for proposals will be released in June. If it is broad I imagine that could include any step in the pipeline.

Lots of Vegetable growers also do seed increase contracts around here. I'm sure they would grow out lines if the funding was available for that. They might also be willing to grow out a trial. Real trials are an important part of breeding.

Lots depends on the details. How much funding?

My neighbor rototilled for me last Saturday with his tractor and a rototiller attachment he had borrowed. Both my rototillers are broken mostly because I've been short on time this last year.

Several possible solutions to that time crunch. One might be to rent some space and maybe time from nearby organic vegetable farmers and stop growing everything myself on my land which is an hour commute away.

June is a terrible time for me to put together a proposal though. My busy season at work and in the garden.

Lots of questions. I've been mostly focused on tomatoes. I'm of the opinion that tomatoes are a very important crop. OSSI has a lot of tomato varieties already. So would they deprioritize more? Cause I would like to double or quadruple the OSSI tomato lineup. If they did have other priorities would I be able and or willing to pivot? I have the only OSSI Fava. I could do a lot more with favas and make it ten. Breed an OSSI spring wheat?
 

[William Schlegel]

https://osseeds.org/ossi-plant-breeder-grants/

https://osseeds.org/ossi-plant-breeders-grant-application/

Working on an application for this. Need references. May be lame but am working with Microsoft Copilot a bit to try to come up with a good one. My main thought is to use any funding obtained to fund grow outs on local organic farms to try to advance and finish some varieties that are close and meet my philosophical requirements which are to have 50% or great wild and or indigenous genetics, OSSI descent, Local adaptation and descent, and be "fancy".

[William Schlegel]

I like the idea, but is there help for those of us who have a variety ready to pledge but need someone else to grow them out and increase seed? I have a pea variety ready to go, but I'm working on other projects.

Sounds like the funding could be used precisely for this- to have your pea grown out for seed increase on an organic farm by an organic seed grower. Let me know if you need some possible contacts- but it would likely be best if you could find a local organic seed grower- that way you could visit the grow out and rogue it so no off types get in. That's essentially what I would like to do with my tomato breeding line 303.

[Steph S]

Yes it's perfect for that!
I read through it and am really impressed with how thoughtful this is about the real needs of independent non funded breeders, to get your seed ready to pledge and release.
Kudos.

[Steph S]

William, you could apply for marker assisted tech, WRT all your hard work with introgressing genes from the wild relatives.  So worth it!!
I do think this application of funds is very very worthwhile for OSSI.

[William Schlegel]

Thank you for the suggestion. I had ruled MAS out initially for my proposal, but perhaps I should reconsider. I'm not sure if markers are available for all the traits I'm interested in. Like arthropod resistance and brown rugose fruit virus. I was thinking grow outs on an organic farm would be more practical given the 3-4 year timeline. That would allow me to finish a few more varieties and have more time for other breeding tasks.

However some markers from wild and domestic tomatoes are available. PH3 maybe PH5, certainly PH2 and some other common resistance markers. I have the PH3 currant and the PH5 currant. Also have some lines with PH3 and PH2 ancestry from commercially available hybrids like Galahad and Purple Zebra. It might be nice just to sort of characterize which lines have which traits. Especially once they are stable.

Winter grow outs would put an entire tomato breeding program almost into a 3 or 4 year timeline. If you could afford to do MAS and winter growouts- you could get professional results. For instance you could cross a arthropod resistant line with say Purple Zebra F1 and select each generation by observing the type IV trichomes and testing for the many known markers in purple zebra. Though I'd prefer to do my usual double cross and characterize those offspring.
 
If I'm wrong and brown rugose fruit virus resistance markers are available I do have some lines that are very far along and no way to test for that trait short of sending lines to an infested region of the world.

Also uncertain what all this level of funding would fund. Grow outs sounded practical and focused to me.

[reed]

Also have some lines with PH3 and PH2 ancestry from commercially available hybrids like Galahad and Purple Zebra

I've grown tomatoes in the same small garden for nearly thirty years and think if there is a disease of any kind, it is probably here but I still get tomatoes. I don't pay all that much attention to it, but I do try to bring in new varieties that might have resistance(s). I don't know what infection it was, but when I grew Galahad, it was not at all happy in my garden. Leaves got brown spots, curled up on the edges and dropped off. It may have been some other than what the PH2 and 3 brings resistance for. I still got some tomatoes, but I didn't save the seeds. The variety Hotstreak, which I think is supposed to have a lot of the same resistances as Galahad did a LOT better. I'm growing the F3 of it this year.

[William Schlegel]

Interesting will have to do more research into that one. Though wouldn't be timely for this funding unless could do two generations a year.

[Carol Deppe]

I read through it and am really impressed with how thoughtful this is about the real needs of independent non funded breeders, to get your seed ready to pledge and release.
Kudos.

We on the OSSI board had a lot of fun designing the grant program. I especially enjoyed the lines where we said +/-  we didn't give a #$%&! about whether you had graduated from high school or college or had any formal schooling at all. What fun!

[Alex]

https://osseeds.org/ossi-plant-breeder-grants/
https://osseeds.org/ossi-plant-breeders-grant-application/

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[Joseph Lofthouse]

Alex: I reviewed your account. I can't find anything unusual about it on OpenSourcePlantBreeding.org. Staff didn't intentionally limit your account. Hoping it was a temporary glitch. If it continues, let me know and I will dig deeper.

If the error appeared when accessing ossi.org, you may have triggered an automated firewall challenge on that site rather than on this forum.

[Alex]

Joseph, I can access this website fine, but there's a problem with https://osseeds.org. Access is blocked based on my location, and it's unavailable on my phone or computer, using different internet providers and browsers.