I’m looking into what seeds I might be able to save and doing some research online.
Leeks grow well in my climate, are pretty easy to grow and can sit in the ground through the winter, so I was hoping to try and start saving seeds next year.
I came across this article from 2018.
99% of leeks grown are now male sterile?
I don’t know how they can justify sterilising a whole plant population. It seems incredibly reckless.
Then there is this article shows that demonstrates the trouble they had to go to to try and get some male sterility in those pesky leeks that kept outcrossing.
It is kind of heart breaking, especially when they talk about all the lovely old varieties of leeks that have been grown here in the uk for
Bulging leeks? Count me in!
I have attached an image from Joseph Lofthouse on another forum I use as a reference. The other images are from my own garden. That leek was from the grocery store. I took it home, ate it, and stuck the root and a couple inches of stem in the ground. The results are in the images. I have the flower stalk stored. I don’t know if any seeds managed to form on it yet.
I have no fear of hybrids. In my situation, I am growing at a small enough scale that I can pay attention to each plant and develop a system to reap the benefit while preventing or reducing CMS.
Thanks for sharing that paper. I got halfway through it before my brain melted. It’s the best explanation I’ve seen so far of the various types of CMS. It sounds like leek breeders use the genetic/(natural?) form of CMS as opposed to cell fusion or chemical methods of causing male sterility. (They tried and failed, ended up spending years on finding genetic MS plants and breeding those).
If I understand correctly, if you include a hybrid leek that has genetic male sterility in a grex, that trait would disappear over time, even if some of the seeds you collected were from male sterile plants. And no harm done to succeeding generations. Somebody correct me if I’m wrong?
It’s the cell fusion form that needs to be more strictly avoided. And the problem is there’s no labeling for most hybrids.
This is one of the leeks that I started trying to grow to seed this year - it was last year’s leek, so this is its second year. It’s an old French variety called ‘blue de soleil’.
I still have no idea what to look for in terms of flowers and male sterility. How would you tell if a leek flower was sterile? Do they look different?
I hope you are right, that would be very reassuring.
I was alarmed by how male sterility is passed down through the female line, so without knowing it, a huge proportion of a grex or landrace could be male sterile without only a few flowers pollinating them all. I don’t know how to tell on leeks.
Would these count as healthy carrot flowers? I’m trying to compare them to Joseph’s photo. It is one of a random group of carrots I grew from some left at the bottom of the fridge,
I am still new to breeding and don’t want anyone to think I am an expert because sometimes I might not get it right. But I still try to contribute when I can. The way I understand things, the male parts need to be present. If they are present, that’s a very good sign. If they are missing, you can automatically regard it as male sterile. Another form of male sterility is when it has male parts but doesn’t produce pollen. I am not going to take time to inspect each plant for pollen but I will take the time to observe the male parts.
The strategy I plan to use for leeks is to plant grocery store leeks by themselves in a different timeframe. If I get seeds, I know some viable pollen was produced. If I don’t, I at least learned something.
I don’t plan to buy hybrid seeds on leeks or carrots or onions. However, for green onions and leeks, it’s just too tempting not to put the discarded roots in the garden and see what happens.
I don’t buy leeks because they’re too expensive for my tastes. They’re easy to grow from seed so we do. We also plant elephant garlic to use as leeks but I’d have to say I don’t think much of them, as leeks.
Sorry a bit late to this discussion. I’ve not noticed male sterility in leeks, but I haven’t been paying close attention. I’ve been working on a perennialising leek landrace for a decade or so, and have a fair seed crop in the ground at the moment. They will flower soon, so I’ll check more closely.
