8/9/2019 Open Pollinated, Hybrid, Or GMO Seeds
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In Your Garden with Jenny Watts
Open Pollinated, Hybrid, or GMO Seeds
Each time I plant a seed and watch it germinate several days
later, I experience the magic
and wonder of Nature. The complex information, which is carried
in each and every seed, that
tells it how to create one certain kind of plant, color of
flower or size of tomato, is trulyawesome. Most of the time we take
this for granted and are just thrilled with the number of
choices of tomatoes and peppers available to us. But a look
behind the scenes shows us that
even the scientists are just beginning to understand these
complexities.
Lets take corn, for instance. Twenty years ago, Golden Cross
Bantam was available on
all the seed racks and was by far the most popular variety of
corn for homeowners. When you
harvest this corn you get the pot of water boiling first, then
run out to the garden, pick the ears,
and throw them into the boiling water. Thats because as soon as
the corn is picked, the sugar
cells begin turning to starch, so time is of the essence. A nice
benefit of Golden Cross Bantam
corn is that you can save an ear of corn, dry it and plant the
seed the following year. This is an
open pollinated variety. Most of the seeds on seed racks are
open pollinated varieties. Heirloomseeds are varieties that are at
least 50 years old and they are generally open pollinated.
To create a hybrid corn, two varieties are crossed with each
other by removing the tassels
of one kind so that the second kind pollinates the first. To
produce hybrid seed, parental lines are
grown side by side in the field, and the cross must be repeated
every time the seeds are produced.
In the early 1950s it was discovered that corn kernels that
shriveled stored less starch and
many times more sugar than the kernels of normal sweet corn. In
1961, they created a
supersweet hybrid of Iochief and named it Illini Chief. From
there they developed a three-
way hybrid named Illini Xtra Sweet, which became the first
commercially available
supersweet corn. This corn lacked the enzyme which converted
kernel sugars to starch after
harvest.Once grocery-store produce buyers learned about the
extended shelf-life of supersweet
corn, almost all the growers of sweet corn switched over to
supersweet varieties. Canneries were
also happy to process supersweet corn, which required no
additional sugar. Other crosses have
been made which make sweet corn resistant to fungus diseases
such as rust and northern leaf
blight. And the development continues as researchers make new
hybrids with high sugar
content, long shelf-life and creamy texture. Organic seeds are
collected from plants that have
been grown organically and can be either open pollinated or
hybrids.
But these are all quite different from GMOs. A GMO is a plant
that has been genetically
modified through the addition in the laboratory of a small
amount of genetic material from other
organisms through molecular techniques. You wont find GMO seeds
on any seed racks.GMO corn does not cross two types of corn, it
crosses corn with a bacterium or fungus.
In the case of Bt corn, the bacterium,Bacillus thuringiensis, is
injected into the corn gene to
produce a protein that kills European corn borer, to reduce
pesticide use. This sounds like a good
idea however, along with the Bt gene, a gene which is not killed
by antibiotics is injected, so that
they can determine which genes successfully received the Bt
gene. So this GMO corn has in it a
resistance to antibiotics, which may be passed on to us when we
eat it. This does not sound like
