The Wired article is kinda sad. It's sad that so many people are so disconnected from the seed/food producers and that they're too busy being consumed by their opinion of GMOs to know how many traditional breeding outlets Monsanto owns.

That whole article is a glorified advertising piece for business as usual for them...it's just shocking to some that Monsanto does things other than make GMOs.

That said, it's good that people may understand it more now...though judging by the comments on the article at the link it seems most people never read the article.

Very true. That's part of the reason I wanted to share that article. Not trying to make an argument for or against anything just maybe something for folks out there to ponder in the "off season"

I didn't even look at the comments. I heard enough of those last month when the GMO labeling initiative failed.

Thanks for the articles..

Can someone point me to a good article on plant hybridization? I don't really understand... a hybrid tomato is just one strain of tomato crossed with another strain of tomato, no? Why can't I save the seeds next year? To put it in people terms, if Person A has children with Person B... they won't be identical, there will be major genetic variations based on which chromosomes they get. Then if the child were to be able to reproduce with itself (as is common in plants)... you would still not get the same person... I don't really understand how plant genetics works.

Breeding is a complex science and modern hybrids are far more "intense" than simply pollinating variety A with variety B.

Technically, you can save seeds from hybrids, there is no biological reason you can't (unless the cross has resulted in sterility) but there is also no garuntee that you will grow a plant that is worth growing. Then again maybe you strike gold and get a really great one, though I think the odds heavially favor the former.

I will try to find a good article for you, but in the mean time you could poke around the hybridizing forum (I think there is one on GW)

Peter,

Here is one persons take on saving hybrid seeds that says that the only real issue with them is the variability in the plants.

I.E. save 10 seeds from an F1 tomato and you wind up with 10 completely different plants. Chances are, says the author, you will find at least one of the 10 as good as (if not better than, he claims) the F1 you started with.

The issue I have (and probably man others) is that I don't have room or time or desire to grow 9 sh*tty plants in hopes of number 10 being decent.

Here is a link that might be useful: Article

Peter, the link below is about how commercial hybrids are created. It's not as simple as one might perceive it to be. The link was given by Dave (digdirt) in a thread on the tomato forum earlier this year.

Rodney

Here is a link that might be useful: Methods for hybrid seed produciton

I think ZachS has it nailed. An F1 hybrid is what used to be just the first step in producing a new variety. Then it was discovered that some initial crosses had desirable traits so they started selling those seeds and not going thru the entire process, with a side benefit that it kept the buyer coming back each year for more seed).

Some hybrids will produce seeds with many (if not all) of the same traits, corn being a likely exception). And there are some seed out there that is labeled hybrid which really isn't (I've seen Golden Bantam corn listed as hybrid for example).

Comes down to how much your time is worth. For a couple of tomato plants probably isn't worth your time to try and collect/breed your own, unless you happen to find an amazing sport on a plant some day. But if you are interested in breeding/selecting a local variety that performs well in your locale, and you have the space and time, it may be worthwhile.

I am just trying to understand the genetics. No offspri ng is going to be the same as the parent unless reproduced asexually. I guess in the case of hybrids offspring may be more like one or the other parent, whereas open pollinated lines have more normalized lines that produce more similar offspring.

While I am not so knowledgeable about the fine details of plant genetics I will try to shed some light based on what I do know (if anyone sees that I've got things mixed up or wrong let me know. I have forgotten more than I actually ever knew)

An open pollinated heirloom is most likely a homozygote. That is its alleles are more like AA or aa. When a homozygote AA crosses with another homozygote AA, all the offspring are also AA. So, they display the same traits as the parents.

Now, obviously there are many genes and some may be heterozgous but for simplicity and brevity let's stick to that example.

Hybrids on the other hand are (again for simplicity) heterozygous crosses between to different homozygous parents. I.E.: AA x aa. So all the offspring are Aa. Crossing Aa with Aa will give you 25% AA offspring, 25% aa offspring and 50% Aa offspring. So that's where you get the variability in displayed traits in the next generation of plants from hybrid parents.

But you may be wondering "if 25% are AA and 50% are Aa, then 75% of my saved seeds should display the same properties." Unfortunately genetics is only that simple on paper, and only good for examples. It only holds true in a precious few real life instances. Several combinations of genes control the same trait and you also have semi-dominant in addition to dominant and recessive genes as well as dihybrids(whos alleles look something like PpRr) and possibly beyond. You then have chi-square values which depend on what some dusty old book says is the "p value" and "degree of freedom" for whatever it it is your looking at.

So I hope that starts to answer your question, but if not feel free{{gwi:807}} to tell me where I went off center haha.

Edit to add:

Think of it a little bit like this - say I am homozygous for brown eyes (BB) and my wife is homozygous for brown eyes (BB). Our child will also be homozygous for brown eyes (BB). If I am homozygous BB and my wife is heterozygous Bb our child will still always have brown eyes, though he may be either BB or Bb.

If my wife and I are both Bb, our child has a chance of having blue eyes (bb).

Once again overly simplified, but hopefully it helps.

This post was edited by ZachS on Mon, Dec 22, 14 at 21:03

Many commercial hybrids come from carefully cultivated parents which can -very- predictably pass a set of traits after a cross. Coaxing out these traits in parent lines can take a long time with a lot of failure.

In a way, this can be more difficult than creating a new open pollinated line and trying to stabilize it.

Some parent lines are really freaky...stuff that would never be a popular open pollinated line because of undesirable traits which are nullified with a good hybridization partner.

That makes sense Zack, thank you.

How they homogenize genes I am still wondering... a lot of inbreeding I guess.

No problem Peter. Biology is my first love (though genetics is not really my area of expertise), lucky for me, it melds well with plants and gardening lol.

I'm sure inbreeding is more prevalent among heirlooms. One of the benefits of hybrids is the hybrid vigor that comes with a rearranging and swapping of genes from a larger pool. That being said, in the case of tomatoes, being self fertile and often self fertilizing, they have adapted to this very intense form of inbreeding and are suffer less inbreeding depression than do humans or even corn.

I think what Zach says is right in the simple case, but it often isn't as simple as that. The tall vs short pea genes that Mendel (sp?) played with were a simple example which perform well according to that model. Many other traits are more complex with inputs from several genes, and can't be simply predicted, selected for, or controlled by this sort of model.

However, for millennia now, people have been saving seeds from plants whose characteristics they wanted to propagate, and it has mostly worked. There are many hybrids that can largely be reproduce by simple seed saving, and to be fair, there are many that don't work that way too. All of the old "heirloom" varieties were selected and saved this way (from the general plant population), so there must have been something to it.

If you really want to get into it, you can research plant breeding further. There is quite a bit known these days about plant traits, and what sorts of genes control them. Go for it if it interests you.

You may want to pick up/read one of the many seed saving books out there. Carol Deppe has written a very good one, with information on minimum numbers of plants and other details you'll need if you are going to get serious about this.

This post was edited by steve333 on Tue, Dec 23, 14 at 8:51

My knowledge of hybreds go back to my high school vo-ag classes of how hybred seed corn is bred. a simple explanation is take 2 parents each excel at some features. Crossing the 2 parents produce a seed that carries the features of the parents at a superior level of the two individual parents.
Developing hybreds is a complex science. I grew hybred plants for there features. I also grow a few heirlooms for customers who think they are better.

You are right Steve, it definately not that simple and not all genes are Mendelian.

However, there is a reason that Mendel and the punnet square are tought as basic principles so that those who are unfamiliar with genetics have some sort of baseline of how heredity works. :)