Do Heritage plants get contaminated and become hybrid?

[sofasurfer]

I was told that even if you plant heritage seeds and you get heritage crops, the plants will get pollinated by any old crap thats growing within a mile and your resulting seeds will be non-Heritage and thus ordinary hybrid.
Whats the scoop on this?

[gryffynklm]

Unless you control the pollination you will never know if the plant was pollinated from a different variety. I haven't tried to collect seeds yet so maintaining control has not been a priority. Here is a link that offers information in preserving heritage or heirloom seeds.

http://howtosaveseeds.com/preserve.php

I have been reading Seed to seed (Book) in preparation for next season. "Seed to Seed" covers pollination control as well as how to preserve seeds from your garden covering every vegetable.

http://www.amazon.com/Seed-Growing-T.../dp/1882424581

[nell67]

They can be pollinated by anything that is light enough to be carried by the wind even at a greater distance than a mile!

[hunter63]

My understanding is that Heritage plants have stood the test of time and reproduced true for a long time, no matter what.
True hybrids will revert back after a few years to the starting version.....and not throw hybrid seeds......
Cutting remain true for a while, unless you really work at the hybrid with controls....and take a while.

[GI Jeaux]

Not trying to sound like a smart butt but, is Heritage seeds the same as Heirloom seeds? Perhaps a geographical vernacular?

Al

[sofasurfer]

Yes, Heritage means Heirloom.

[hunter63]

Good question, I guess I assumed that they meant the same....
Now I have to go look it up.....LOL

OK here ya go.....
Quote>
The Difference Between Heritage and Heirloom

Heirloom and heritage are two sides of the same coin- they have the same meaning, but the term "heirloom" applies to plants and "heritage" applies to animals. Quite simply, heirloom varieties are those that have unique genetic traits that have been maintained over many years and are distinct from commercial varieties. And earning each of those labels requires a commitment to saving the variety of something you already have- you save and replant your heirloom seeds from previous harvests so that a strain of plant grows true to type. For heritage breeds, a slow growth rate and natural mating is key.

"There's been a lot of movement back to a lot of heirloom varieties because people want to preserve the agricultural heritage that is locked into those seeds and develop a lineage of place with each variety," said Paul Betts of the High Mowing Seeds Organic Company in Vermont
,Quote
http://www.pallensmith.com/articles/...the-difference

[GI Jeaux]

Thanks hunter.

Al

[LowKey]

Some plants are self-pollinated. Others are open pollinated. Any open pollinated plant can be pollinated by a similar cultivar anywhere within the distance a bee might fly. Not everything is wind pollinated.
Beans, tomatoes, peppers, lettuces are all to a good extent self pollinated. Pollination occurs within the same flower.
Cross pollination requires male and female flowers though most times they grow on the same plant. Cucumbers, squash, brocolli and cabbage (if you aren't careful these two will cross), plus a number of others.

I hand pollinate my winter squashes and pumpkins cuz they will cross with each other in open pollination, but some like the acorn squash will also cross with summer squash. That's not good. Kills the keeping quality of the acorn if they grow at all. If you are really serious about keeping true seed, you can bag the female flower after you pollinate it to keep stray insects carrying other pollen out.

Here's a short paper on hand pollinating squash and corn:
http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/hs398

Here's a really long paper on a bunch of crops.
http://www.seedsanctuary.com/articles/seedsaving.cfm

[Rick]

+1 Lowkey. Good post.

[Chris]

Technically, when you grow any nonhybridized crop, you're changing it every single year. Every time you collect seeds they will grow plants genetically different from their parents. Their genome is just, for lack of a better word, stable. In this way the notion of "heirloom" is a farce, an heirloom tomato is not genetically the same as something grown 100 years ago, it has changed 100 times, but because that is all the plant version of inbreeding, any changes happen only slowly.

If a hybrid has a one night stand with your heirloom it doesn't mean you'll get mixed offspring. Hybrids have a far less stable genome, and chances are your heirloom variety will mostly cover up any of the hybrid traits. Though to be fair you shouldn't take any such seeds and spread them to people under the heirloom's name, but for your own uses, they're probably fine.

More complexly, you know some genes are dominant and some are recessive. For an heirloom variety to stay consistent over the decades most of the genes in the pool are going to need to be dominant, otherwise eventually (because of the inbreeding) recessive traits would be expressed and you'd get obviously oddball plants. Heirloom varieties can thus be thought of as having primarily dominant genotypes.

Hybrids on the other hand are the result of careful breeding to bring out traits that aren't usually common. If a certain trait was dominant it'd be easy and most tomatoes would already have it. Hybridization is usually about trying to get uncommon, but desirable, recessive genes expressed.

So when your mostly recessive hybrid breeds with your mostly dominant heirloom, the heirloom covers it up as surely as brown eyes cover blue.

You're probably much more likely to get something weird from having two disparate heirloom tomatoes cross pollinate than from having a modern hybrid cross with an heirloom.

In summary, for the purposes of maintaining heirloom lines, if you're in the business of seed production you need to be careful. But for the purposes of growing food and saving seeds just for yourself, hybrids aren't going to mess up your garden.

This is also why you shouldn't save seeds from hybrids (and expect to grow the same thing anyway) hybrid's are so unstable that they don't grow true from seed, not even close usually. Hybrids need to be cloned.

[your_comforting_company]

Currently, the science points to plant contamination by hybrid and GMO plants. I say the possibility is definite, especially since pollinators like bees and hummingbirds don't know the difference.

[hammer9875]

ok , I am totally new to this whole thing mom got me to thinking about it a couple of years back and now I am ready to do something about it ,but never have done anything like this before , and my friends think I am nuts .....so know one to ask what if ? or how ? any sugesrtions

[Rick]

What are you wanting to know? Gardening covers a wide variety of subjects so specific questions will yield the best answers.

[kyratshooter]

Speaking from just simple experience in the garden patch I find the heirloom varieties of tomatoes very stable. I can plant my regular tomatoes and cherry tomatoes within 3 feet of each other and not get cross pollination. They self pollinate and remain true. I have been using the same strain and saving seed for many years now.

As pointed out, squash is very unstable due to preferring insect/wind pollination. I have to keep the various types widely separate and grow acorn squash on one side of the yard, butternut squash on the other and pumpkins down on the bottom of the lot. Otherwise you get something that reminds you of a mutant ninja turtle.

Grains like barley, wheat and corn (yes corn is a grain not a vegetable) are bread to be wind pollinated in nature. You can hand pollinate corn but it is normally wind/gravity pollinated. The tassel on top of the stalk is the male part of the plant and the ear of corn is the female part. Corn also has a narrow window of pollination time. When the plants are all in pollination I like to walk trough the corn patch and shake the stalks to insure the pollen showers over the plants and pollination is complete. In the old days farmers would tie a paper bag over the tassels at pollination time, the place the pollen filled bag over the ears to pollinate their plots of sweet corn for family use. Field corn was left to wind pollenate.

One of the tricks to growing corn in the garden is that it is not grown in rows, but in blocks or patches. If you try to grow only a single row or a couple of rows of corn in your garden you never insure that pollination will occur because the wind can blow the pollen away from the plants rather than onto them. The Native Americans that developed corn grew it in hills with 9-10 stalks in each mound of dirt.

And remember, there were not honey bees in the Americas before the Europeans arrived. 75% of the world's food crops were developed by Native Americans in an environment with no bees to pollinate the food. It was all either closed pollinating or wind pollenated.

[hunter63]

Block planting or clump planting is a favorite of mine and many gardners.....rows are for machines and anal retentive garden technicians.

LOL......