Real Seed breeds true, so you can save your own seed.
By Ben Gable , Real Seed Catalogue, friends of Dyfi Valley Seed Savers
Hybrid ("F1") seed is the result of a cross between two different , but heavily inbred
parents. Seed you save from these plants will either be sterile or a give a whole mix of
shapes and types, usually producing a poor crop.
Only the seed company knows what the parents are, thus only they can produce that
particular variety. If you want to grow it, you have no other source - good for the seed
companies but not for you! Small growers should be able to keep their own seeds,
selecting each year the best plants most suitable for their own land and conditions.
Yes, there are a few exceptions, but in general, the hybrid seed business has been a
public relations victory over the small grower. For example, you will soon see more
and more hybrid leek seed offered to you. This is because the supermarkets have set
incredibly rigid limits on leek size, and the only way to achieve this is through
hybridising two inbred varieties, so all leek seed production is switching to hybrids.
You will be told that these new leeks are 'more uniform', 'straighter' and so on. But
what about flavour and adaptability? People seem to forget that we want to eat &
enjoy these things - food is not just a commodity!
Despite common urban myths, there is no magic about hybrids. So-called "hybrid
vigour" is the simple fact that good hybrid seed is better than bad real seed, and that
sadly much of the real seed you get now has been badly maintained. But good real
seed - which admittedly requires time, care and patience to produce and maintain must, by virtue of the genetics of these things, be just as good, and in fact much more
adaptable to different soils. The key here is that it takes less manpower to make the
hybrid seed, so the wholesale seed growers are much happier to let the old varieties
fade away.
And as for the cost of hybrid seed, this is another mystery. Hybrids are not made by
hand. Yes, they were in the past, but not for many years now. Most hybrid pollination
nowadays is done by chemical sprays, not hand pollination, so hybrid seed shouldn't
be any more expensive than other seed. There may be a slight extra cost associated
with the spraying, but it certainly doesn't justify the high prices and tiny packets some
companies are offering.
Basically, seeds are now bred for large industrial farms (which is where the money is)
and you, the home grower, just get fobbed off with a few of the same thing. Modern
advert copywriting sometimes tries to disguise this. So when you're offered something
that's 'good for freezing', what they mean is that it was bred to ripen all at once for
machine harvesting & you'll get a glut.
Here are a few examples from 2004 catalogues that we found: How about 'really
uniform fruit' - which often means 'inbred for the supermarket, narrow genetic base,
may not adapt to your soil'. Or 'straight long shanks' usually means 'bred to fit the
packing machine.' Or the best one yet - 'Leafless peas - easy to find the pods'
translates as 'much smaller yield (the plants have no leaves !) - but at least now we've
got rid of the leaves we can harvest them with a combine.' What a sad situation this is,
with marketing people rather than gardeners writing the descriptions in modern seed
catalogues.
In summary, hybrid seed can indeed have advantages for the industrial-chemical
farmer who wants to harvest all at once. But for the small home grower who wants a
good yield over a long period, traditional varieties are usually more productive. This
has been shown time and time again, and we think that once you have tried the real
open-pollinated varieties we have found, you will agree.
A NOTE ON GENETIC ENGINEERING OF PLANTS
& OTHER GENETICALLY MODIFIED ORGANISMS (GMOS)
Although Ben studied genetic engineering at university, all of our breeding is by
traditional methods only. On grounds of both safety and ethics we strongly oppose all
genetic engineering and the patenting of plants.
The subject is very complex, but the dangers are very simple. We believe that,
without exaggeration, the release of Genetically Modified crops truly is a dangerous
practice that threatens the entire ecosystem.
It is simply not true that Genetically Modified crops will solve third-world food
problems or require less pesticides. This is no more than advertising 'spin'.
Genetic engineering is NOT just a variant of what farmers and breeders have done for
centuries. It is a completely new science that can give very odd, very different and
highly unpredictable results. It is not 'natural' for a plant to have a fish gene in it, and
there is no knowing what odd poisons the plant might make as a result of finding fish
proteins floating around in its sap.
GM plants are probably unsafe to eat, but we don't know for sure, because due to
intense political lobbying, none of these plants have undergone any food safety
testing(!) - which is why it is important that food should be labelled as to whether it
contains GM ingredients or not. The only benefit of GM crops is to the large
multinationals that are using them to take control of the worlds food supply.
We will not knowingly have anything to do with genetically modified seeds