Organic Seed and Public Domain Plant Breeding:

'shroom was kind enough to send this to me to post here for your enjoyment and as research for the upcoming interview, please keep the questions coming, do your research and come up with some great questions, this will be very interesting my friends! Be sure to check out the two Kinship garden layouts in the previous post as well.

Here is the article:

Organic Seed and Public Domain Plant Breeding:

By Alan M. Kapuler Ph.D.
Peace Seeds
10-24-2006

Biopiracy is big business. So is owning and controlling the foodsystem. Tied to the land, water, and resources, our prevalent agriculture is suffering from monocultures, petrochemical inputs, the tyranny of machines, insufficiency of human labor and the hegemony of the wall street banking system.

So control of the seeds, particularly the control of availability, variety and diversity of crop plant seeds which in turn reflects the directions of collecting, breeding and selection by governments, corporations, universities, plant breeders, seed companies and backyard gardeners determine what is available to us as consumers, cooks, gardeners, farmers, eaters, ecologists; people all.

It is with some of these things in mind that in the 1970’s and 1980’s we began collecting seeds and breeding new varieties for the organic movement and the public domain.

Mendel began breeding peas more than a century and a half ago. His legacy endures. We found a copy of his paper on peas in which he shows how to unfold the flower, distinguishing pollen from stigma, and learned how to transfer pollen from one flower to another.

In the 1980’s, we made a public domain vine snap pea (Sugaree) because all the available ones were plant variety patent protected (PVPed). The company controlling these peas wasn’t interested in organics. Yet organically grown snap peas were important plants in our diets and our cuisine. So we used classical plant breeding to liberate some garden peas. This work continues. We developed a yellow podded vine snap pea with unusually sweet leaves (Opal Creek) and in collaboration with Carl Jones a vine snow pea with delicious 8-9” pods (Green Beauty). Recently we used the parsley bush pea which has leafy fronds rather than tendrils to develop hypertendril peas, ones with large, many fingered tendrils that have snow, snap and shell characters in different lines. This year, in collaboration with Phil Gouy, we identified several traits likely to increase the productivity of bush and vine peas by 2-3 fold and began crossing them into our favorite cultivars.

From this we reckoned that organically grown, organically adapted and organically selected cultivars held by the public would be vital for the organic movement and for humanity in general. In addition, these cultivated varieties would have to reflect as many aspects of the local gardening food system as possible; namely, temperate zone crops adapted to the coast, the valleys and the mountains. We needed to explore and develop new, superior and original varieties to promote, enhance and distinguish organic, biological agriculture. Recognizing that F1 hybrids and GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms) were further aspects of the privatization of the genome pool, our organic varieties would be open pollinated, free from imposed transgenes and selected under organic conditions.

To us, the organic evolution has moved from 60 Centuries of Chinese Agriculture, from the Indore System of Composting, from Steinerian Biodynamics to the era of the Molecular Biology of Organisms. In particular, microbes that make up an essential part of organic soil cooperate to form biosomes, groups of interacting creatures that promote, enhance and sustain plant growth and health. Bacteria and archaea integrally connect to mycorhizal fungi and viruses in the soil network that biologists call the rhizosphere, the root zone of plants.

A recent microbiological discovery: for decades farmers have been using reduced nitrogen fertilizers like urea and ammonium sulfate to enhance the growth of the plants they grow. Yet plants don’t utilize reduced ammonia very well, they prefer and concentrate nitrate, oxidized nitrogen in their cell vacuoles. The conversion of reduced nitrogen provided by a variety of microbes, like blue-green bacteria, to nitrate has recently been discovered to take place thanks to a previously unrecognized group of archaea called ‘crens’. They are present in most soils, in most ecosystems on planet earth. Bacteria don’t convert much ammonia to nitrate, crens do. This opens up vistas for further developments in microbially enhanced fertility regimes to increase the output of organic food.

Since part of our work with seeds was to provide for the kinds of foods we love to eat and flowers that improve our moods and gardens, we began with our favorite garden crops: sweet corn, broccoli, onions, winter squash, peas, beans, tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, marigolds, sunflowers and zinnias.

At the same time, we were fortunate to collaborate with Dr. Sarangamat Gurusiddiah, head of the Bioanalytical Laboratory at Washington State University at Pullman, WA (since retired), in making hundreds of amino acid analyses of organically grown crops looking of nutritional selection criteria for many of our crops. Nutribud broccoli, one of our brassica cultivars was found to have significant amounts of glutamine, one of the energy sources for our brains, hence the name.

Since we originally began growing food with heirloom cultivars, it soon became apparent that some heirlooms did better than others in terms of vigor, productivity, seed production and food quality. We chose and continue to look for fine heirlooms as parents in making new kinds.

After growing more than 200 varieties of tomatoes during our decades of organic gardening, we had established preferences and picked our favorites for parents. It takes just a few minutes to make a cross. It takes many months and years to follow the cross to new and improved varieties.

While our first crosses were with heirlooms, now many new kinds come from the intercrossing of varieties that have taken us years to develop. Familiarity and experience is necessary to sustaining and developing worthwhile new cultivars.

A key aspect of laying out a garden for developing new varieties is to know the how’s, what’s and when’s for each and every kind of plant. Are the plants insect, bird, bat, ant, wind or water pollinated? Are there complete flowers, ones with both pollen and stigmas, or plants with male and female flowers on the same plant or are there both male plants and female plants? And then there are the critical issues of inbreeding and outcrossing. Some plants like sunflowers, brassicas and cucurbits prefer to outbreed. Others like tomatoes, legumes and marigolds are usually self-fertile.

Then there is timing. So many aspects of fertility have to do with timing. When the flowers open, when the pollen is mature, when the stigmas are receptive, whether the sun is shining or rain is a’fallin, the emergence of insects thru their metamorphosis from larva to pupa to adult, the direction and timing of the wind, the daily and diurnal temperature and the many kinds of intervention that a gardener or plant breeder can interpose to aid or limit pollination are all important in the conjunctions that lead to seed production.

Taking your hand to seed collecting and plant breeding opens possibilities for uniquenesses in your garden, new vistas that unfold with each crop and each garden with the unknown as a friend and ally involving yourself in sustainable ecology and the paradigm shifts coming with new discoveries about life.

Updated Year 3 Pedigree of Astronomy Domine

Year 3 Pedigree of Astronomy Domine Sweet Corn:

(New information in bold at bottom of post)
Three Year Pedigree of Astronomy Domine Sweet Corn: Notes on parent lines in original two mass crosses as well as selection criteria and explanation of intent and novelty.

Explanation and Intent of development:

Astronomy Domine Sweet Corn is the working name of a “mass cross” breeding and selection for sweet corn which meets a niche demand in Southern Indiana markets for a multi-colored, open pollinated, enhanced nutrition, drought tolerant and genetically diverse sweet corn of special interest to home gardeners, seed savers, and market gardeners looking to fill a niche. The project has evolved over the past year by way of the Hip-Gnosis Seed Development Project to include and inspire home gardeners and plant breeders across the United States and Canada to use the first generational germless from the original mass cross to develop and increase the diversity of regional strains of Astronomy Domine which may later be renamed by participating growers to their own desire.

Multiple lines of colored open pollinated and hybrid sweet corns were planted together in a small eight row block on our small produce farm in Pekin Indiana in the 2007 season. The corns ranged days of maturity from 55-90 days, planting was staggered so as to further facilitate crossing between late maturing, mid maturing, and early maturing varieties leading to a harvest date that was literally all over the map in the late summer and early fall of 2007. No irrigation was performed and the plot was fertilized only with composted chicken manure. Very little earworm damage was noticed and the corn seemed mostly unfazed by the record setting drought of 2007, sans the genetics provided by Ruby Queen hybrid sweet corn (Burpee’s Seeds). CCorn planted early in the season (as early as April 23’d) was somewhat affected by the cool soil emergence; however this provided us with a bit of selection for cool soil emergence issues. Seed was interplanted in bare spots over the next three weeks to further facilitate the crossing of different maturing dates.

Colored corn kernels are of particular interest to us in our breeding experiments due to the high levels of Anthocyanins which free radical scavenging amino acids are thought to be important in both combating and preventing cancers.

This corn also represents progress towards a self sustainable, Open Pollinated sweet corn developed for organic and natural growing systems as well as selected for multiple uses. Fresh Culinary, Dried or made into corn meal, and ornamental uses. Also represents an attempt at developing a “Value Added Seed” line with the added value present in the free amino acids that pericap color imparts. This experiment also represents an attempt at developing defined color traits in the early milk stage of sweet corn for the purpose of attracting market customers and for the added nutrition of the pigmentations of these corn kernels.

Note:

“Value Added Seed” - Is a term that I use to describe seed of special interest which contain added traits which set them apart from standard varieties. Particularly traits which make the seed novel and in most cases higher in nutrition than alternative seed.

Pedigree:

The following is a listing of the corns included in the original mass cross of 2007 as well as some descriptive notes regarding each variety:

Ruby Queen Hybrid- Sugar Enhanced deep red kernelled hybrid variety introduced by Burpee. Tolerant of Rust and Stewarts Wilt. Not cool soil tolerant but a good source of color and anthocyanins. Color apparent at milk stage.

Blue Jade-Open Pollinated SU variety sourced through www.seedsavers.org . Very diminutive and dwarf variety that is actually acceptable for pot cultures. Short season, developed in the north. Deep blue kernels at maturity, increasing in color as the conversion of starch progresses. Apparently somewhat drought tolerant. Planted throughout the three week period. Color apparent at late milk/early starch stage
Millersburg Red Sweet Corn- Open Pollinated SU variety that was sourced locally in neighboring Orange County Indiana. Large Kernelled late season variety, not as deep red as ruby queen, more subdued earth tone and diluted red color. Large Ears and Tall plants. Color apparent at late milk stage

Millersburg small- Open Pollinated SU Variety, sourced from the same location as above but smaller diminutive plants that mature early, probably the result of inbreeding depression. NEarly identical to above variety. Color apparent at late milk stage

Red 101-Open Pollinated SU variety, sourced from Purdue University. No history was reported other than a possible breeding line from a “corn lab” once located in Clark County Indiana. Late season, large eared and kernelled, deep red cultivars. Tolerant of Stewarts Wilt, cold tolerant seed. Three ears to a stalk. Color apparent at milk stage.

Mushrooms Martian Double Red Sweet Corn- Open Pollinated SU Variety. Sourced through Sow Organic Seed. Bred by Dr. Alan Kapuler of peace seeds. Purple kernelled mid-season type, high in anthocyanins (reportedly higher than that of blueberries), mid to late season. Pedigree includes “True Platinum”. Color apparent at milk stage

Triple Play- Open Pollinated SU variety from Seeds of Change. Could not locate a history or a breeder. Small plants bear three small ears of SU type corn which matures to shades of blue, yellow, and white. Color apparent at late milk stage

Black Mexican- Open Pollinated SU Variety. Reportedly grown in the New York area by Native Americans, primitive and early form of sweet corn. Small plants which produce ears which turn from white to deep blue. Not nearly as sweet as modern varieties even SU types. Color apparent at starch stage

Black Puckers-Open Pollinated SU Variety. Sourced from a seed trade. Nearly identical to Black Mexican with slightly different shaped kernels and some crossing with a red variety. No History Provided. Color apparent at starch stage

Country Gentleman-Open Pollinated SU Variety. Sourced from www.seedsavers.org . Old fashioned white sweet corn. Late maturing, large kernelled and large eared corn, popular with home gardeners. Apparently a parent of popular SU and SE hybrids Silver Queen and Silver King

White 101- Open Pollinated SU Variety. Sourced through Purdue University. Large plants, very late season, near last to mature. Large ears and huge kernels. Makes a good roasting corn but not so good boiled.

Hopi-Pink Sweet Strain- Open Pollinated SU Variety sourced through a trade. A sweet version of the Hopi-Pink flour corn popular among seed traders and corn collectors. Appeared to suffer some amount of inbreeding depression. Beautiful Pink Kernels of sweet corn. Mid Season type. Color apparent at milk stage.

Hookers Sweet- SU, Open Pollinated type. Grown By Ira Hooker and offered by Seeds of Change. White/yellow kernelled sweet corn of good quality, great for roasting. Color is apparent at late milk stage.

Howling Mob- SU, Open Pollinated type. Old fashioned roasting corn, sweeter than most old roasting ears. Late season, large ears, large kernels. Tolerant of Stewarts wilt.

Black?-SU, Open Pollinated type. Very early season. Sourced locally from a farm stand customer. No history given other than grown in the family for years. Appears to differ from other black types. Color apparent at late milk stage.

Double Standard- SU, Open Pollinated bi-color type. Sourced from abundant life seed foundation. Could find no history or pedigree or breeder.

Washington County Orange- SU, Open Pollinated type. Gifted to me by an elderly farming couple years ago. Apparently a selection of a mutant field corn plant from back in the 50’s. Grown for generations by the same family. Mid-Season. Yellow Kernels turn orange-ish red at late milk stage.

Silver King- SE, Hybrid Type. Great tasting and high yielding modern white hybrid.

Golden Bantam- SU, Open Pollinated type. Popular with home gardeners, originally introduced by Burpee’s Seeds man. Plump golden kernels. Mid season type.

Ashworth- SU, Open Pollinated type. Early season sweet corn developed by Fred Ashworth originally supposedly named “rat selected”. Great early season type.

Pastel Colors-SU, Open Pollinated type. Gifted to me by an Appalachian friend in Manchester KY, represents work with segregating crosses of flint types and sweet types. Mixed seed stock from various selections. Late season, large ear types. Colors present in milk stage.

Festival Multicolor-SE/SU types. Developed by Ken Ettlinger of The Long Island Seed Project.

Four other unnamed segregates were also massed into the field. These segregates represented my earliest attempts at sweet corn breeding and were comprised of various crosses of the above.

I feel that it is important for the reader to know that each of the varieties listed above in the cross are also being maintained in their pure state in our living seed bank at Hip-Gnosis Seed Development to preserve their cultural heritage and genetic diversity. Some are being further refined for possible future release. Of particular interest is the Pastel Color line for further development and release.

Seed was selected from the most productive, drought tolerant, healthy, and interesting plants and bulked together for distribution and planting in 2008.


Several new seed stocks have since been added to the mix to further integrate positive traits which we will begin selecting for after this seasons new mass cross. The seed stocks added to the mix include:

Rainbow Inca-SU, Open Pollinated Type. Developed by Dr. Alan Kapular from a mix of southwestern and heirloom sweet corns as well as a large eared, white Chokelo variety from Peru.

Painted Hills-SU, Open Pollinated Type. Developed by Dr. Alan Kapular from a cross of breeder Dave Christianson’s flint corn “Painted Mountain” crossed to Ashworth. Nice diversity of colors, very genetically diverse, large kernelled type.

Cocopah-SU, Open Pollinated Type. Obtained from Native Seeds/SEARCH. A southwestern Native American variety of primitive sweet corn in a wide rainbow of colors.

Anasazi: 85 days. A very diverse strain that has 5 to 7 foot stalks, with 8 to 12+ rows of multi-colored kernels.


Future Development:

This year we will have two selections of Astronomy Domine that we will work with. The first will be the original stock with the added genetics mentioned above in a new mass cross. The selection criteria will as always range a wide array of positive traits including cool soil germination and emergence, tolerance to disease, lodging resistance, drought tolerance, and taste, coloration in milk stage, pest tolerance, and taste.

This corn could be widely selected and allowed to re-hybridize every season or diverse selections could be made and selected for uniformity. The idea here is to basically develop an excellent open pollinated corn for organic systems which also incorporates enhanced nutrition and fills a niche market, while also striving to develop possibly the most genetically diverse sweet corn ever introduced.

The second selection of Astronomy Domine will include the original stock and the added genetics mentioned above inter cropped with a white SE type sweet corn, most likely Silver King. The Silver King will be planted in alternating rows and detasslled. This should lead to the large ears and large kernels of Silver King in the array of colors of Astronomy Domine while maintaining the SE genetics for enhanced sugar. The corn from the mother Silver King plants will be used for the fresh market and seed will also be bulked into seed saved from the 2008 crop for future development.

I can and do forsee future crosses planted in mass for years to come with this project, corns only benefit from hybridization and as long as I can keep introducing new genetics to the mix, particularly those of colored genes I will probably do so.

Much of my work with this corn experiment was inspired by Dave Christianson who has spent thirty plus years breeding his Painted Mountain Flint corn.

I will update this pedigree and research as the growing season in 2008 and selection work begins.

Updated: Two new accessions added to second year pedigree. Martian Jewels and Martian Jewels selected for Pink and Gold. Both from Alan Kapulars Peace Seeds by way of Homegrown Member Pugs.

Update for Year 3: Recently I had the distinct pleasure of opening my mailbox to find the first returned seed sample from Johno. John made some very nice selections and already there is a clear difference in strains. Our selection is much darker in color than Johns selections and the seeds of our strain are a bit smaller, this selection has now been added back to the F-3 seed from this year for integration. A number of new accessions have also been added to the list via ARS GRIN:

Nueta Sweet Corn-Yelow-no information currently

Millersburg Red Sweet #2-Red sweet corn apparently from Millersburg New York.

Aunt Mary's Sweet Corn-White corn from Wisconsin. No further information

Sweet Corn (Indian)-another multi-color selection, from Colorado, no further information available.

2009 will see yet another in a succession of mass crossing of even more genetic diversity into the Astronomy Domine line. 2010, stabilization will become the focus of this experiment.

Traditional Farming, Plant Breeding, and Natural Observation: Possible Solutions to problems facing us in the Twenty First Century.

Written and Researched by: Alan Reed Bishop of Hip-Gnosis Seed Development and Bishop's Homegrown

Without farmers and traditional methods of agriculture, plant selection and breeding it is very doubtful that we would truly know what “civilization” is. The farmer, his cultivation and domestication of crops and livestock are the first and biggest step towards civilization. Without the farmer many facets of civilization become un-thinkable and indeed become extraneous and indeed detrimental to the job at hand, survival; for it is the farmer, the domestication of his crops, the harvesting and distribution of those crops and the reliability of the farmer and his time tested methods of agriculture, plant and seed breeding and selection, and distribution of those crops that make up the very backbone on which the rest of civilization is built.

Without the hard work of the traditional food and textile producing farmer we would still be a hunter and gatherer society, roaming from place to place and taking from the land only that which it naturally gives to us, a cycle which while more natural caries with it implications. Without the advent of the hoe, seed selection, tending of the earth, careful observation of the cycles of the seasons, and ever so careful tending of those crops, we could not and would not have the time for the full on development of culture and civilization that we see rise concurrently with the rise of agriculture around the world. The artist, the poet, the musician, the muse, the soldier, the civil workers, the architects, the metalworkers, religious and spiritual convictions and every niche in society could not be filled and would become utterly futile if not for the work of the farmer. It is farmers which provide us with the impetus for civilization. The farmers arrive and cultivate the land, providing us with food and nourishment, with the very substance of life, seemingly, if not completely, taming the elements of nature if only momentarily, to provide us with a more settled and civilized form of life in which trading, niche jobs, and culture may flourish. Without the farmer all of these systems fail.

It is through traditional and time tested agriculture that these great deeds become possible. It is through the traditional and time tested agriculture that civilizations flourish and or fail partially or wholly and through which the human gene pool can continue to grow and expand. Through the responsible and sustainable and natural cultivation of the earth, saving of seeds, the breeding of new plant varieties, and the basis for the value of food, in the fact that it is a labor of the earth which cannot and should not be cheated with chemical treatment and dangerous cultivation practices least we face the consequences of the poisoning of our own food, water, and the very seed and ground we grow our food in, and more recently the very proteins and genes that we pass on to our offspring which are now threatened by Genetically Modified Organisms which are neither labeled in our country nor covered widely by the press. Farmers who would overlook these practices need not apply to the bold new future which I subscribe to least they take the time to realize the consequences of their actions by informed observation and seeking the knowledge of days long lost but which still holds merit and is passed by word of mouth from farmer to farmer. A good starting point for those of such persuasion would be the Native American philosophical belief known most widely as the law of “seven generations” a law which plainly realizes the consequences of negative actions upon the earth and her eco systems and seeks to inform observers that one should not commit an act if it will in any negative way effect any generation for the next seven.

With this is mind it becomes ever more apparent the predicament that we are placed in as a civilization as we enter deeper into the twenty first century. With the fall of the family farm and the apparent acceptance of chemical and Genetically Modified agriculture by the few remaining corporate farmers in our country and indeed around the world, we are loosing sight of what it is that in fact created our civilization, sustained it for thousands of years, and can again be the savior of much of our heritage and being here on the little planet we call home. We are rampantly overpopulating the planet and stressing it’s natural resources and restorative properties to the max, all the while those with seats in power would have us believe that our very lifestyles, our very being on this planet, our choices in everyday life have nothing to do with rising rates in disease, a rising sea level, more violent ecological disastrous, natural disasters and global warming, while deep within our own hearts, no matter how hard we try to ignore, we know by way of natural observation that we as a species are responsible for the widespread destruction that surely will be the seed of our own destruction.

Only through education, personal choice, moral deliberation, soul seeking and history can we seek to make positive change in this negative atmosphere. Choosing to step away from popular trends, wasteful mentalities, futile wars, twentieth century technology, and earth polluting, life destroying pollutants and towards self sustainable, clean and efficient, natural, truly green technology or the application of which to old technology can we begin to right the wrongs of the generations who have come before us. Only through allowing the voice of reason and right is heard can we stand forth and make positive change.

It is with these ideas that I seek to inform and “push the buttons” of society, cause questioning, and indeed to allow my contribution to civilization to stand forth and be heard. I often find myself observing the nightly news and questioning how the perceived problems that are presented to me are considered to be unsolvable dilemmas when the very answer lies right at the feet of humanity, within 10,000 years of natural observation, cultural memory, and innovative and safe problem solving. I can only surmise that perhaps the cultural memory has been cut off or at least dampened by the growing mentality of “give me, give me, give me”, the lack of soul seeking, and the desire to live vicariously through the gadgetry of the twentieth and twenty-first century.

Indeed it seems that the human population has been deceived and done a great injustice, this is of course saying in a manner, that perhaps we aren’t as intelligent a species as we like to believe and in fact maybe we are nothing more than a dangerous disease on the face of planet earth, a disease which can be manipulated by members of it‘s own design to be unquestioning organisms of defeat and destruction. I say this because I wonder at exactly what point the human civilization went into auto-pilot and handed the keys over to the few individuals with power to make our decisions for us, certainly humans have been manipulated and controlled in the past, but I find it particularly noteworthy that now more than ever attention can be and is swayed from the most important of all dilemmas, indeed those happening in our own backyard yard and are instead swayed towards the latest celebrity gossip, political diatribe, or new techno-gadgetry.


The so called “peak food” dilemma and some ideas which may represent the promise of life and nutrition to a growing populace lost in commerce.


If we are to accept that a growing generation(s) of the human populace are indeed as consumer and trend minded as they appear to be and indeed perhaps this is do to under-education and or deliberate avoidance of factual evidence then perhaps it is time to change our opinion of what exactly constitutes “farm land” or land which can be used to produce agriculture products, both food items as well as those of a beauty or environmentally enhancing character and those which contain medicinal valueS.

One thing I’ve often wondered is why, particularly in urban settings, parks do not more often have areas set aside to grow food plants. For example, why is it not mandatory for a park to have to plant 20% of its grounds with food producing crops such as apple trees, pear trees, and black berry bushes and so on? Within circles of like minded farmers and plant breeding this type of agriculture is known as “perma-culture” and represents a growing percentage of agriculture present on small family owned farms. If indeed every park in America were planted implementing this design can you imagine the way that the tables would turn on nutrition, disease, and hunger overnight? Of course those in power, particularly those within the confined walls of corporate board rooms would never allow such a thing to occur, because suddenly the sales of their fatally poisoned and genetically modified and processed foods would start to decline. Another great area for this type of agriculture would be along the state and federally owned highways right of ways. Can you imagine a highway planted with apple trees instead of dogwoods stretching for miles in every direction? In South America and in some areas of the East it was common for roads to be lined with food producing crops of perennial and annual types, there for the use of the hungry and wary traveler on the way to his next location and often these projects were administered by the governments of the regions. Is it to much to ask for at least rest stops along interstates to be filled with orchards and gardens instead of snack machines filled with processed and irradiated foods?


Urban Gardening/Community Gardening

Another facet that I find quite disturbing is the lack of urban and community gardens in cities the world over. Indeed in recent years, with the help of several adventurous and brave souls we have seen urban and community gardens and agriculture education rise in some of the biggest cities in the U.S. But those cities that go without would only be doing justice to their citizens to seriously consider such measures. It is my belief that every high school should have a one year agriculture program complete with basic education in natural gardening and hands on environment for children to learn to tend to the earth. I mean after all, you can waste all that land on enormous football and baseball fields, what will a small plot, planted naturally and tended with care and administered by the school hurt anything. Children could be taught the basics of tending their own gardens, producing their own foods, saving their own seeds, and in advanced situations breeding their own plants. Information which is rightfully, by way of culture and civilization, as well as 10,000 years of history, theirs to do with as they want.

Informing our children of their agriculture history is just as important as informing our children of the history of the world and the nation and should be a pre-requisite for graduation, it also wouldn’t hurt to cover the topics that are most disastrous to ecology and nature as well. When I was a child earth day and Arbor Day day were a big deal, they were spent learning about agriculture, planting trees, and exchanging information and questions with professional and well educated nature enthusiast, it may be these very people, coupled with my Appalachian heritage and family that have led me down this long strange road at Bishop’s Homegrown/Hip-Gnosis seed development, it wouldn’t hurt to see this education expand the young minds interested in exploring the fields, forests, and bio-diversity of our planet earth, after all it is these minds which will next shape our world. It is these very children who will one day set in political offices and may be able to put a stop to the rampant chemical and genetic modification dangers inherent in today’s agricultural practices.


Farmers Markets, CSA’s, Local Eating, and supporting your local farmer.

Supporting your local farmers market and CSA’s, particularly those who seek to change the agricultural systems common in today’s world back to those which reflect the natural world is another way to curtail the food shortage and to begin to correct the wrongs done to the environment as well as to improve the nutrition that you provide yourself and you family. It is on these very farms that you will find people intertwined with the natural cultivation and observation of the earth, working to improve and sometimes even breed new food crops and preserve the bio-diversity of our food crops. An important step in supporting these very farms is by actually visiting them, many of the growers love to give tours of their farms, exchange information with other farmers and customers, and share in the diversity and heritage of the work that they do.


Green Graffiti

Green Graffiti, which I also refer to as “Positive Vandalism”, is an idea that I’ve been working on for several years. Particularly using the time tested method of seed balls (balls made of red clay containing the seed of food crops or medicinal crops), these seed balls are thrown out onto the ground and sprout with the rains of spring provided much needed beauty and food to areas which have been depleted of natural resources. A great place to use these seed balls is in abandoned lots in the inner city and perhaps even along sidewalks and in plant beds, these seed balls may provide a bit of nourishment to someone in need and could be a great asset to entire communities as well as “greening” up the concrete jungles and bare soils of dilapidated urban areas.

Here is a great article about seed balls as well as instructions for creating your own:

http://www.volunteertaskforce.org/ppwatershed/Seed%20Ball%20Project.htm



Natural Research and Development

A concept that simply escapes my grasp is why there is little to no money or open resource seed banks available to independent researches in the development of new varieties of food-plants. In an ever changing and dynamic environment that changes year to year with the escalation of global warming it is of utmost importance that independent and regionalized seed breeders have access to genetically diverse material to create the next generation of open pollinated, copy left, seed options. Instead government institutions such as the USDA and the ARS GRIN system have focused all of their contributions on the big bio-tech companies, specifically hurting the small farmer and seed breeder who must do everything out of pocket with only commercially available seed stocks and those traded with others for a starting point.

We started the Hip-Gnosis seed development project to combat just this type of problem, offering seed of our unique varieties and crosses as well as old Open Pollinated selections, and our information to the general public for free. It is with this dynamic relationship that we are putting the power back into the hands of the grower to make selections for his or her own environmental conditions for the betterment of the agriculture world and civilization as a whole. These seed may indeed represent the next generation of self-sustainable agriculture and will always remain open source and the property of humanity as a whole to help nurture along new varieties, adapted to the conditions of a dynamically changing environment. Is it to much to ask for a little co-operation from our own government, or is it that they too stand to loose too much money and power by sleeping in the same bed as their corporate partners?

Tomato Trials and Breeding in 2007

Written and Researched by: Alan Reed Bishop of Hip-Gnosis Seed Development and Bishop's Homegrown

This year marked a huge growout of Tomatoes here at Bishop's Homegrown. We planted a huge number of cultivars to evaluate in our organic culture systems in order to fill the niches of our seed banks and the gaps between genetic types.

Basically were looking for disease tolerance, pest tolerance, drought tolerance, production, taste, nutrition and novely in different types of tomatoes such as slicing types, paste types, cherry types and so on. It would be nice to have a range of colors for customers to pick and choose from at our market stands in all the different types of tomatoes while also being able to provide best use recipies, heirloom/OP histories and the histories of crosses and segragates from F1 commercial lines so that, as we usually do, we are able to strike up a friendship and conversation with our customers and friends at market or while giving farm tours and speaking engagements. It's always nice to be able to relay a story that people can relate to and it is exspecially nice when we have a local or regionalized Open Pollinated type from our area who's name itself reminds us of it's story, much like the names of old country roads like "Lick Skillet" or "Honey Run" which remind us of the unique culture of or locality and region.

Some of the standouts this year were of local origin such as "Goat Tit", a nice, elongated and tipped paste tomato, similar to Roma but with a much nicer taste and texture. Very productive and disease tolerant and barely even noticed this years record drought. A tomato that I believe will find a place in our fields for decades to come and which will be of great merit to market farmers looking to sell a "niche" crop paste tomato. The paste is superb and matches that of any of the best varieties of paste tomatoes on the market today and in my opinion excedes it! I look forward to increasing the seadstock of this variety so that I can share it with others, the only problem is it appears that a number of cultivars may be known by the same name as is also the case with another of our standouts, "Bull Sack" which is a heart shaped tomato which although wasn't very productive, stood up to the drought and disease and pests very well. Definetly a variety of merit. Both of these varietys will merit from some selection pressure in coming years for improvement purposes.

Bishop's Big Pink, a large 10-16 ounce tomato that has been grown in my family for years was also a standout, though the past few years I have been doing selection for larger fruit with less cracking. My family always saved seed from only one or two tomatoes which led to a bit of a genetic bottleneck, a problem which I am currently trying to improve upon with larger sized, crack resistant fruit. The fruit is Potato leaved like brandywine and may in fact be a selection of Brandywine. The Bishops Big pink tomato has been grown by my family since a great uncle purchased the then "unnamed" seed from a hardware store in the 1950's, nary a year has gone by (minus a couple in the first years of the new century) where this tomato has not graced the soil of our small farm. After some selection I plan on releasing this variety as one of my two alternatives to Brandywine.

I was also gifted some seeds early in 2007 from a great aunt on my mothers side of a tomato which in description sounded like a large yellow bi-color tomato, but I got conflicting reports from other family seed sources who said that the tomato was actually a mix of the original tomato and a few "sport" tomatoes and had been saved without selection in this mix for years by the Hoskins-Barger family. Upon growing out the seed I got all manner of traits, Pink potato leaf, pink regular leaf, yellow regular leaf, bi-color regular leaf, and a couple of other combos. The one with the most merit seemed to be the pink potato leaf. The coloration is somewhat more of a "pastel" pink that tomatoes like brandywine and production is way up there, according to customers taste was good, and disease and drought tolerance were impressive. I released a little bit of seed to folks over on the message board http://alanbishop.proboards60.com for further development and due to the unstable condition of the seed, I imagine all number of recombinations may lead to some new open pollinated cultivars, which is exactly what I was hoping for.

Once again Rutgeurs and Jubilee toped the list as far as productive, open pollinated tomatoes which still can't be surpased here on our farm and will no doubt always find a place in our soils.

We also grew out a number of our crosses from the previous years, of particular note were Mere De Nomes, La Mer (noir), and La Soliel which represent our work towards sustainable and open pollinated saladette type tomatoes of 2-3 ounces or so. Mere De Nomes and La Mer (noir) have both been released through the Hip-Gnosis seed development project on our message board.

Mere De Nomes is an indeterminate, red fruited, saladette tomato at about 2-3 ounces. Very prolific and still shows a bit of genetic diversity. It was hardly bothered or slowed down at all by our record setting drought this year and was a big winner with our farm stand customers who we littlerally heard storries of fighting over the last few in their baskets, always a compliment in my opinion. I think that this one could be a big market hit in time and would be a great canadate for poly culture early tomatoes in the spring.

La Mer Noir resembles Mer De Nomes in almost all ways but grows a bit larger in size. It's the result of a cross between Mere De Nomes and a french variety sent to me labled simply as "Black". This one is another favorite of our customers though we didn't have many to offer this year due to a snafu in the greenhouse in the spring.

La Soliel is yet another sister line to Mere De Nomes and La Mer Noir. It represents our attempts at breeding an orange fleshed version of the line, we made great strides in selection this year going through three Filial generations, an early one in the greenhouse, a second in the summer plot, and a third in the winter greenhouse. Next year we should be close to having an Open Pollinated Derivitave. Size is about 4-5 ounces or so.

We also did some further selections with our Jack White tomato, a highly productive and according to our farmstand customers, "delicious" alternative to other white tomatoes. Jack White is a selection from a cross of great white and white beauty, there is still some genetic variation but it appears to be far less than previous growouts. Another breeding project was our Green when ripe Absynth which was derrived from a cross of the french tomato "emeraude" (which may or may not be a selection of emerald evergreen) and Aunt Ruby's German green. We were after productivity and less cracking and I feel we have made great strides in that area.

Working towards becoming more self sustainable we have also been doing some segregation work to some of our favorite commercial hybrids, most notably Lemon Boy and Brandy Boy. Commercial hybrids make great foundation plants for the development of new varieties. When you hear someone say not to save seed from a hybrid, it won't be me, sometimes the best new varieties originate within the genes in a commercial packet of seeds and with a little work you can isolate out some truly terrific varieties.

Lemon Boy is a highly productive and popular, globe shaped, truly yellow tomato with great disease tolerance. I've heard it's fairly easy to segregate but would prefer to experiment with it myself so I have obtained seed from both my F1 and F2 growout as well as seed saved from others growouts all the way up to the F4. My goal is to "get out" an open pollinated derivitave that matches the productivity, taste, and color of the original while maintaining as much of the disease tolerance as I can.

Brandy Boy was one of Burpee seed companies new introductions for 2004 I believe. There was some speculation early on that Brandy Boy may have just been a renamed open pollinated tomato since there was evidence of Burpee using this marketing scheme in the past with Bucks County. Brandy boy is a large 12-16 ounce pink potato leaf tomato much like brandywine, but with the productivity of better boy or big boy and less spliting. In all ways in my opinion it beats out its' ansector brandywine and our customers like it as an alternative since it has a longer shelf life which they really appreciate. In 2007 I grew out some saved F2 seed as well as seed that others have saved from F2-F4 lines and saw a bit of variation, though not nearly as much as in some other segrating growouts. However, there was definetly enough variation to definetivly say that this tomato indeed is a hybrid. In time I hope to develop a strain that matches or excedes the taste and texture of brandywine and maintains the potato leaf trait while maintaining the original traits of the hybrids disease tolerance and productivity in an Open Pollinated derrivitive. In time this tomato could replace brandywine as a main crop tomato and I see great things in it's future, particularly for market farmers who want the taste, texture, look, and legacy of brandywine with higher productivity and disease tolerance. Another interesting trait that I noticed was that this tomato set fruit far better than brandywine in harsh heat and humidity levels. Unfortunately it also retains the exerted stigma of Brandywine which makes it prone to crossing. All future growouts will be done in isolation of other tomatoes and other segregates so as to prevent contamination. Maybe in a year or two Hip-Gnosis seed development will have something to release to the local farming community. This fall we will provide mixed seed of our growouts through our message board for those interested in making their own selections.

I also grew out some Sungold and Sunsugar cherry tomatoes for some future breeding work within other cherry, grape, pear, currant, and L. Cheesmani lines in 2008 for a series of cherry tomato mixes I'm tentitively calling "Have you Got it yet". It will be nice to have the genetics of the high sugar content (brix) of these tomatoes in our breeding mix. I expect great genetic variability in those lines.

We also grew out and saved seed from Porterhouse tomato, another new Burpee introduction, albeit one that wasn't particularly impressive in the F1 generation, though it will be interesting to see how it segregates out and there are some genes there that I think I can use in the future.

All in all we made some great prgress in developing some new regionally adapted and open pollinated cultivars for use in organic agricultrue and home gardens as well we have been able to distribute some finished varieties and genetically unstable breeding material through out online message board which is always good and gives us some variability in varieties that will be open pollinated in the future.

Speaking Engagements - Spreading the word locally about Bishop's Homegrown, Self Sustainability, Natural Gardening, and Plant Breeding

January 15 and 16 2008 saw me give my first two agriculture related "official" speaking engagements here in my home county in Salem Indiana. The first was given to the local Salem Rotary and to say the least I think I've had better days, part of the problem I believe is that I tried to be a bit to structured in my delivery, using a paper I had written word for word and not being nearly liberal enough to ad lib which is something that always made me more comfortable when I was playing music and I hardly ever went on stage knowing what I was doing. The second engagement was given to the Washington County Master Gardeners association at the Washington County Government Building and I can honestly say I had a blast!

Everyone was so receptive to everything I was talking about and really got into the conversation. I fielded several questions ranging all kinds of topics. We covered my farm, my natural "eco-logical" growing practices, vermiculture, seed saving, plant breeding, the politics of food, greenhouses, enhanced nutrition, a little soil health, plant variety protection, genetics and so much more and I really had a lot of fun. I made a lot of new friends and got to share a couple of my creations with everyone including handing out samples of my "Robert Johnson Mississippi Delta" White Burley tobacco which I think everyone will really enjoy once they grow it

I would really like to do some more of these presentations in the future and would love to find some other places to do them so if you know of any then please e-mail me at bishopshomegrown@gmail.com I would love to do some more speaking in the near future!

Anyhow, since we didn't record the ad-libbed speech and since I haven't posted anything lately due to a bad chest cold and getting things ready for '08 including building a new greenhouse, I though I would post the paper that I used for the first lecture, I also used it as basically a notation of things that I would like to cover at the second lecture as well and definitely used the high points of the paper to illustrate my points. Anyhow, following is the paper pretty much un-edited, the paper will later appear in the 2007 research journal that I will be finishing shortly.


Bishops Homegrown
Hip-Gnosis Seed Development and “Eco-Logical” growing practices
An overview of the importance of self-sustainable, natural growing methods, seed breeding and selection in the 21’st century in lieu of modern food and farm safety dilemmas and small farm independence.
Written by: Alan Reed Bishop

I believe that the future is deeply embedded in our past. Depending upon the sources you choose to accept and read, agrarian agriculture and civilization has and did flourish for anywhere from 7,000 to 4,000 years. Civilizations rose and fell and were supported by a backbone of independent farmers and their selections of seeds and growing practices. Lessons learned and passed down through history by family members and tribal elders, observation of nature was more than a hobby, it was a way of life and the more one observed the more one began to “know” how eco-systems delicately intermingle and balance on one another.

Seeds are direct, living pieces of our agricultural past, each seed holds the germ of the plant selections of generations of peoples settled in one place and selecting a variety to grow in their specific conditions and for their needs over hundreds and sometimes even thousands of seeds, almost all modern open pollinated varieties and even hybrids have some amount of genetic material hearkening back to selection by tribal peoples or early settlers and pioneers.. Seed saving and development is mans way of furthering individual desirable traits and qualities and essentially serves sort of an enhanced form of evolutionary selection pressure.

In days past failing to save seeds and till the earth in preparation of spring meant that there was less food for the civilization and tribal peoples as a whole, a mistake which could in fact be fatal. Until the age of industrialization and the rise of corporate agriculture and synthetic inputs which would supposedly revolutionize the agriculture industry and make life easier all around. Indeed it did make life easier but in time also made folks more reliable on both fossil fuels and poisonous insect and disease controls coincidentally coinciding with the rise in Cancer rates as well as developmental disabilities, taking power from small family farms and putting it in the hands of large corporate conglomerates who would in the future unleash unsafe and highly unstable genetically modified crops and “terminator” genes which could put a stop to seed saving as a whole, damaging the environment and delicate eco-systems, and proving unsafe for human and even animal consumption

Seeds of days gone by do not contain these inherent dangers and neither do the offspring that we breed from two or more parents of open pollinated seeds. Often times these seeds produce in times when modern selections will not do so, and these seeds have done so for thousands of years under conditions less than desirable for growth and perfection, ushering generation after generation from birth, through life and on to death bye way of healthy food and soil.

In days gone by small regional and localized seed companies sold seed developed and suited to particular areas and regions, particularly adapted to the environments where the seed had been sowed, grown, cultivated and harvested over a number of years, often time seeds of merit able value were even shared by families with their favorite seed suppliers, but with the advent of modern commercialized, high input, and environmentally damaging agriculture these seed companies were replaced by large conglomerates only offering gardeners world wide plants that do well on “averages”.

As commercialized agriculture continued to grow so to do the widespread pollution and destruction of the very soil which has supported us along with the air we breathe and the water we drink. Agriculture took very little time to realize the ramifications of putting volatile chemicals directly into the ground, depleting the micro-organisms which feed the soil, destroying the valuable earthworms which Darwin once described as the intestines of the earth, and causing any number of environmental dangers and devastation. People literally forgot how to tend the earth.

Often times I am a target of criticism for my way of small farming, banking seeds, and putting much work into the soil which I tend. The most common comment I hear is “I do things the way my grandfather did.” A comment more often not born out of ignorance for the past, indeed most grandfathers in our community did not use synthetic fertilizers which at the time were either not commercially available or far to expensive to afford, more often in days gone buy composted or aged manure and ash were applied to fields building up the content of organic matter, increasing the micro flora of the soil, and allowing earthworm populations to flourish.

In modern times we have seen the rise of large food markets, fast food, high cholesterol, food poisoning and danger of Genetically Modified genes causing allergies or illness to seep into our food supply. More an more our own food supply is being outsourced and shipped in from other countries or from corporate farms who in fact do little to justify their “organic” labeling because “organic” is now overseen by a government who has done little to no research on “organic” growing practices and has used the “final rule” of organic growing and the paperwork and filing fees involved with “organic” certification to favor corporate agriculture.

In a time when going “green” is becoming trendy, but is none the less of high importance in the minds of many Americans it seems silly to think that we are being green by buying hybrid cars or equipping our house with solar panels while still buying our food at large grocery stores and not locally or even growing much of our own food, instead we are shipping it across country or even worse, across continents and oceans and racking up the food miles and enlarging our carbon foot print. What is truly green? Self sustainability and local food development is my opinion, it’s a small start, but none the less a start.

Where does all of this bring us? How can we start being Locavores?

Bishops Homegrown was started because for too long small family market farms have gone the way of the past, become sub-developed, or been corporate farms. I saw an important community resource, a source of food, friendship, health, and information eroding because my generation refused to pick up the torch of the old ways and carry it forward into the 21’st century. I decided to grow my produce in the most natural way that I could, avoiding “organic” certification and instead relying on educating the public and allowing our farm itself to be open to folks to tour or to come lend a helping hand if they so please, in this way people can indeed have a first hand experience with the person who grows their food, see where their food comes from and how it is produced, but I also wanted to take it a step further.
I wanted to provide agriculture information written by a young layman without a day of college under his belt for young laymen who are interested in resurrecting small farms and a way of life for their family, so I started taking notes and writing research papers to distribute yearly to those who are interested which led me to my next step. Revitalization of localized and regionalized plant breeding inspired by the unique and healthy advantages of colors, sizes, shapes and so on.
It was this that led me to start growing out massive amounts of germ-plasm (seeds) and searching for traits that are desirable for our climate such as diseases resistance, pest resistance, and drought tolerance as well as searching for pigmentation's which inherently contain free amino acids that are not commonly available in commercial agricultural products. For example, did you know that sweet corn comes in more colors than just yellow and white? What if I told you that it comes in every color of the rainbow and can contain high levels of an anti-cancer agent known as anthocyanin? What if I told you that the darker red that a watermelon is the higher the valuable anti-oxidant lycopene is present? Did you know that some carrots are purple, red, yellow, and contain more than just beta carotene? The also can contain lycopene and anthocyanin.

In my few years of independent plant breeding I have developed 8 distinct new lines of open pollinated tomatoes including blacks, purples, whites, greens, yellows, and reds, a new rainbow colored line of sweet corn, a number of sunflowers and tobaccos, winter squash of all shapes sizes and colors, bi-color yellow to red watermelons, rainbow colored high protein field dent and parching corns, A twenty four lettuce blend of seeds collected locally and a number of projects in the works, many which are exclusive to my operation and available only to my customers and community and friends.

I have also done a number of experiments in other fields of agriculture; one of our largest new fields of research at Bishops Homegrown is the raising of red worms for both fishing bait and compost. The red worms do a terrific job of turning produce beyond the point of sell or donation to a food bank into great and fertile compost which we use on the farm, slowly over time we have built up an ability to provide our own farm with nearly 80% of our own fertilizer produced on farm.


We have also been working on a number of lo till to no till experiments as well as inter cropping live mulches and planting of green manure cover crops on our soils to improve their tilth, drainage, and any erosion problems which we have.

Bishop’s Homegrown is striving not only to be a great business but to also be a great resource of healthy and viable food, seeds, and information for our community and indeed the world outside of our region, we send seeds and information to gardeners all over the world and do much work with independent seed breeders the world over to further improve the public domain food crops and their seeds for a world in which the future of food production and safety seems to be bleak.