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Inbreeding Depression

I’ve touched on this briefly in the past, but I thought I would go into this a bit more, because it is really an important issue for people who save their own seeds.

There are three main kinds of plants: inbreeding, out breeding and plants that do both.

Inbreeding plants are by far the easiest to save seeds from, because they self pollinate and you don’t need to worry about cross pollination issues. These plants have also generally evolved to avoid inbreeding depression. Examples of plants that fall into this category are tomatoes, peas and grains.

Out breeding plants are a slightly different story. Out breeding plants cross pollinate, and you must consider this when saving seeds. Often the easiest way to prevent cross pollination is to grow only one type of a particular plant species. Examples of out breeding plants are corn and cabbage related plants. With out breeding plants, you also need to be careful to avoid inbreeding depression.

Inbreeding depression occurs when the gene pool becomes too small because too few plants of the same species were cross pollinated with one another. To avoid this problem, you must save seeds from a number of the same type of plant. Exactly what this number is varies from plant to plant, and indeed is the point of some disagreement between gardeners. In general if a plant is completely outbreeding, you must save seeds from more plants than a plant that is both in- and out-breeding. In some cases you have to save seeds from 100 or more plants, and in other cases a 4-5 is enough. If you’re not sure, it’s better to save seeds from too many plants than too few.

When your seeds experience inbreeding depression, they will lose their vigor and and yields will decrease. In addition, some previously dormant recessive genes may express themselves resulting in undesirable traits, possibly rendering your seeds unusable. These problems may not show up for several generations after the seeds were saved.

Normally the only solution for inbreeding depression is to either create a hybrid variety by cross pollinating with another type of plant from the same species, or to introduce some new pollination partners with seeds obtained from another source.

The opposite of inbreeding depression is usually referred to as hybrid vigor. This is often seen by plant breeders when they create a new variety of plant.

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Seeds

Seed Bags

Everyone has been posting pictures of their seed packets lately, so I thought I would post mine. In my case seed bags.

I met up with the Seed Ambassadors in Belgium last week, and traded seeds with them. They have been traveling around Europe and trading seeds with some very interesting people.

I have several varieties of peas from the Priekuli Plant Breeding Station in Lativa, a special variety of Marigold brought with them from Oregon, several varieties of beans from different places, Lithuanian beets, Belgian leeks and spelt originally from Belarus but selected in Lithuania for 14 years. On the right in the ziplock bag are some unusual squash seeds bred in a home garden.

My samples of these seeds are pretty small, but it’s the intention to share them when I have enough with anyone who is interested.

I also got some potato varieties, a plant and an interesting tuber. I will post about all of these later.

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Help!

Writing a blog like this takes a lot of time. Not just time spent writing posts, but all the research behind it.

We live in a world that’s changing quickly, and it’s clear this blog is addressing topics people find interesting. The number of people reading this blog has sharply increased in the last few months. The need to expand the scope of this blog is increasingly obvious, and it’s getting overwhelming.

Please help me by emailing me!

I can’t possibly keep on top of all the blogs, newspapers or news sites, and I am frequently away from my computer for several days at a time anyway. If you see something somewhere that relates to topics addressed by this blog, please let me know. I almost certainly won’t notice anything that’s not published in English, so please point me to interesting things in other languages.

I am always on the lookout for other blogs that address the same topics this blog does. From time to time I go searching for other blogs, but you can help me by pointing out interesting ones. If you are starting a new blog that you think has an affinity with this one, let me know! By the way, one of the best ways of letting me know is to link to me. I will notice this link within a few days, and if appropriate will reciprocate. By linking to each other we help people notice one another. Even if I decide your blog is not suitable for immediate inclusion in my blogroll, I will probably include you in my RSS feeds and if you post something I think is interesting will link to your post.

Roughly speaking the topics of this blog include heirloom gardening and farming (which implies organic or mostly organic, and can include vegetables, fruit, flowers and other plants), heritage and natural foods, traditional methods of food processing, politics of modern food production and associated environmental impacts, sustainable agriculture and in the soon to be famous words of Michael Pollan, people who want to “Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly Plants.” These topics are rapidly evolving, so don’t be afraid to let me know about anything else that might be relevant.

If you are involved in any public seed swaps or related events, or even if you just know of any, please let me know so I can mention it.

Do you have food recipes you would like to share? Please send them to me.

Would you like to write a post on this blog? Get in touch and let me know.

Are you an organization who would like to put me on a mailing list to receive press releases or other news information? Don’t just grab my contact address off this blog and sign me up without my permission! Let me know, and if I am interested I will give you a special email address for this purpose.

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Highest Soy Prices in 30 years

The highest soy prices in 30 years are forecast for 2007 in Europe. This is according to a Dutch language article on the Wervel website.

With prices expected to be roughly 50% higher than in 2006, and since nearly all meat, dairy and processed foods in Europe are based on soy, European consumers are likely to see sharply higher food prices this year.

Why are soy prices going up? It turns out large numbers of US farmers are abandoning soy crops in favor of growing corn (maize), and this is causing a world wide shortage of soy.

Why are US farmers switching to corn? The use of corn based ethanol is growing in popularity as an automotive fuel in the US, and this is causing shortages of this grain and forcing the price of it up. Farmers simply see more profit in growing corn.

Since nearly all meat, dairy and processed foods in the US are based on corn, higher grain prices will likely result in sharply higher food prices for US consumers as well.

Undeniably this is good news for small farmers, many of whom have been expected to produce below their own costs for many years and could now possibly make a profit. Unfortunately not many of these farms producing corn are independently owned anymore, most are owned by large corporations who stand to benefit the most.

I guess for most of us these price increases won’t be a big concern, after all the average person in Europe or the US pays about 10% of their income for food. If this should double, most of us will get by.

The real problem is the rest of the world, since food prices are very much a global phenomenon. In many places in the world people use a much higher percentage of their income to feed themselves. To double the price of their food potentially means they can only eat half as much. This could be a huge problem for the developing world.

It takes the same amount of corn to feed one person for a year, as it does to produce 25 US gallons of ethanol. This is about the size of the fuel tank in an average SUV. If someone drives an SUV, and fills their tank twice a month, this is the same as feeding 24 people for a year. In addition, ethanol pollutes the air more than normal gasoline.

Why is ethanol becoming so popular in the US? After all, isn’t it a good thing for America to reduce their dependence on foreign oil? Reducing their dependence on foreign oil would be a good thing, but it turns out that producing corn based ethanol consumes twice as much energy than what would be in the final product. The majority of this energy comes from fossil fuel based sources, powering tractors and trucks that plow the fields and transport the grain and producing chemical fertilizers and pesticides that are based on petroleum products. There is hope for a technological breakthrough to improve the way ethanol is produced and make it more energy efficient, but that is simply not there yet. This means in the coming year the US consumption of fossil fuels and production of greenhouse gases is set to sharply increase, all in the name of using a supposedly environmentally friendly automotive fuel.

Besides increases in greenhouse gases, other environmental consequences are likely to be equally devastating. When soy beans are grown, they fix their own nitrogen. In plain speaking terms, they produce their own fertilizer and leave the ground in a better state than before they were grown. Commercial production of corn on the other hand is very detrimental to the environment. Corn requires significant levels of fertilizers and pesticides, and rapidly degrades the topsoil. According to Harper’s Magazine, in their February 2004 article, “The Oil We Eat“, the entire state of Iowa is about six feet (almost 2 meters) lower than before WWII, primarily due to animal feed grain production and the associated loss of topsoil.