I have been growing sweetcorn for over a decade and graincorn for a few years, but so far haven’t done much crossing. Have grown sweet painted hills landrace for a few years so tecnically there is some crossing, but mainly it’s been about avoiding crossing. This year I though could introduce some other sweetcorns to sweet painted hills and start mixing graincorns as well, but keep them separate. My problem is that I haven’t got the distance to isolate nor do I have long enough growing season to isolate in time except with the fastest graincorns. Even then there is some overlap at the end. So far I have detasseled my graincorn to avoid cross pollination. There might have been some crossing the other way around because of this right at the tips of graincorns. Atleast there has been some off type kernels which I take is because of that? So far I have been able to just remove tips and it’s no issue, but if I want to breed I would like to sure that that doesn’t happen. So is it possible to desilk my graincorn to avoid mixing with sweetcorn? As I understand those silks work even if they are cut so maybe I need to tape them as well? This would be just to introduce new genes, later I would select by speed.
What about what’s the best way introducing new varieties to the mix (within types)? I was thinking that I could detassel those new varieties to have definite crosses and next year let them cross pollinate freely. Off type colours might tell crosses in some cases, but not all.
Since I don’t quite understand how corn genetics work there is one case that is still quite mysterious to me. I had one completely yellow cob in my atomic orange from seeds I purchased. I did not see any off types when I planted them, but there must have been a cross or possibly natural mutation. What I wonder is that some of the landraces I have grown have some single colour cobs despite not being covered. Yet there must have been some cross pollination. So is that single colour just dominant and isn’t affected by cross pollination, but is maybe affected some other ways that are not visible? If in my case cross doesn’t seem visible from kernel, but cob it produces is different colour, what has been dominant?