As something of an extension on the previous post concerning inbreeding depression, there is an interesting article on page 7 of the latest issue of Seedling magazine on the GRAIN website. In this article is the suggestion that the much hyped hybrid vigor is really a complete myth.
Commercial hybrid varieties are always made from intensely inbred parent strains, because they need to be as genetically stable as possible. This means they display a very high degree of inbreeding depression, and are very poor performing as a crop plants. When the parent plants are crossed, the problem of inbreeding depression is solved, and the vigor is restored to what it should be. The so called hybrid vigor is usually determined by comparing the F1 hybrid to the parent strains, which is a completely unfair comparison.
This would seem to eliminate the only reason a for choosing hybrids over open pollinated (OP) varieties. Hybrids are very expensive to produce, and are frequently generously subsidized by governments so farmers can afford to buy them, in the logic they will increase food production. Seed companies of course prefer to sell hybrids, because farmers cannot save their own seeds.
Today the state of OP crop varieties is very poor, because these plants need to be regularly grown out and a lot of work is needed to select them for suitable traits. The seed companies have been concentrating on hybrid varieties and neglecting OP ones. Some seed savers have been working on keeping OP plants suitable for commercial use, but much more work is needed for this.
