Corn landrace, and seeking possible partners

Adaptation Projects
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Here is my corn grex…

Painted mountain corn, 70-90 day
Atomic orange corn, 60-90 day
Re-pioneer dent, 80-90day
Abenaki roy flint, 88 day
Harmony grain corn, 85-115 day
Lofthouse flour corn, 100 day
High carotene flint corn, 100 day

I’m planning to succession plant them to try and get them all tasseling at the same time for the most crossing. And going to try to alternate the rows with long, short, long, short DTM to optimize the crossing to work towards shorter DTM. I’m imaging an 80-90 day corn goal but I’m not set on a certain DTM right now.

As well as this main grex I’m planning sweet corn…

Dorinny sw corn, 75 day
high carotene sweet, 75-85 day

I wasn’t going to keep the Dorinny for seed but seeing the variation in the high carotene seed I think it’ll be fine. I’ll be selecting for high carotene and this will just be some more genetic diversity.

The goal with this is to have some sweet corn for eating. But also to grow in it’s own block and keep introducing it to the main corn grex. To add more high carotene genes. And to add more short DTM genes.

I’m thinking after a few years I’ll be able to have the sweet corn landrace be it’s own thing just for eating and some seed saving. And the main corn landrace will be somewhat stabilized with high carotene and a DTM that’s short enough that I’m happy with. Then I can begin sorting out the sweet kernels and work them out of the population in a few years.

Q- sweet kernels show up if any sweet gene is there? Yes? So if I simply don’t plant sweet kernels I can have it out of the population in one or two years?

Q- I know others are interested in colorful sweet corn. I’d be happy to have someone join me that would be interested in the culled sweet corn from my population once I’m at that point.

Q- I’m interested in a growing partner!
I know corn is space intensive but is anyone interested in this corn grex? I am somewhat limited with corn… rather self limiting myself so I don’t plant the whole garden in corn… Once I have lots of seed I can plant it in field and then harvest whatever survives. But to start I am dedicating about half of my regular garden space to this project.
I have bought enough seed to start this grex that I would be able to share a small amount for someone else who would want to grow corn but not have enough space to dedicate to growing what is considered enough for a stable population size.
I would send this as two packets. A 60-90 day packet and a 85-115 day packet. Total 68 seeds. So you could choose to plant it all together or succession plant it like I’m doing.
I picked these based on my interests and I’m mostly looking for someone to trade seed with for the first couple years. After that I think I’ll be tailoring it to my place and needs. But I will have plenty of seed that won’t be fitting my goals that I’d love if they could help someone else in their landrace goals.

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The sweet gene is recessive. That means that it cannot be eliminated by selection alone, in a promiscuously pollinating population. If a cob shows even one sweet kernel on it, then at least half the kernels on the cob carry the sweet trait, even though it is not visible. And a cob could carry the sweet trait, and not have any sweet kernels show up, if every kernel was pollinated by a flint or flour corn.

Because sweet is recessive, we can select for a completely sweet population in a single generation.

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Hmm… So I’ll just have to select away from it over time. Going to have to rethink it a bit. Selecting for the high carotene from the flint and selecting toward shorter DTM.

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What is the effect of having sweet corn kernels in a grain corn mix? Would there be a reason to take it out, if you were just going to grind for cornmeal? I imagine it impacts nixtmalization if one wanted to do that?

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I’ve seen some sweet corns that are said to be for sweet cornmeal. Mostly I’ve seen alot of sweet corn mold on the cob while trying to dry it out for seed. Since I’m in a generally humid place. And I don’t want to have to worry about that mixed in across everything.

I don’t know enough about nixtimalizing yet to know if it would effect that.

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I’m considering lumping… Atomic, Painted, and Abenaki together. Then Harmony and flour together. Then Re-pioneer itself and high carotene flint itself.

Because…
Re-pioneer is already selected for Ohio.
This gives me fairly even amounts of each this way.
I can select rows of HC flint to keep the high carotene influence going.
Atomic, Painted, and Abenaki are close enough DTM to plant together.

This lumps them together also along with my interests in them. Harmony and flint are Joseph’s creations, and being able to compare them to ones not from him.
Atomic, Painted, and Abenaki might add some pollen this year and then mostly become a different line. Selecting it for colors. While my main interest is a high carotene grain corn for cornmeal/nixtimalizing house use. And then livestock feeding.

Hmmm… See this is why I talk (/post) so much! Takes me a bit to work things through. Why don’t I just plant Re-pioneer, Lofthouse flour, and High carotene flint together? Those are closest to my goals right now. And it would give me some more space for other stuff in the garden.

…Ok that’s it… I have officially lumped them! :joy: No more waffling over how to plant it. I’m leaving the rest to nature and it’s ok not to plan out every single seed.

Colored grex. 60-100 day. Painted mountain, Atomic orange, Abenaki roy flint, Harmony grain, Lofthouse flour.

Main corn grex. 60-100 day. Abenaki roy flint, Harmony grain, Lofthouse flour, high carotene flint, and a few Painted mountain that were yellow or white. I will alternate rows of this with Re-pioneer dent (80-90 day).

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I don’t want sweet in my corn but included it at first because it was part of such a diverse collection I already had and because I think some of the modern sweet corns have some great qualities such as stalk strength and disease resistance.

Once it was mixed in it took a few years to get rid of it. I don’t grow very large patches so at first, I planted seed from a nice ear, even if it had some sweet kernels. As I built up my stock, even one sweet kernel got the entire ear culled. I haven’t seen a sweet kernel for two or three years now but still wouldn’t be terribly surprised if one shows up.

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