Showing benefit- collecting data and hosting trials

General Discussions
1

Having done some educational work around seeds in the 2020-2022 years and then more about adaptation gardening since, I think one thing really important is proving our claims, so to say being able to SHOW what we’ve achieved, otherwise the imposteur syndrome will always be felt in ourselves and in the public, even slightly. It’s a funny topic that popped up with a counterpart in Quebec, putting loads of energy in landrace breeding. Not that we don’t have a theoretical understanding of the potentials of what we are doing, not that we are not putting all efforts in that direction (and yes indeed crazy efforts in that adaptation though that wide crossings then selecting process) but if we only rely on readings and testimonies of what some have achieved in their fields, we stay very very very weak.

But before showing, there is a need to knowing, i.e. make sure at least we’ve made progress in the direction we were going, around the goal we were looking for. Without that in mind, it could become only claims.

Three ways to prove we’re making progress, for example:

  • Control group with known varieties (for ex. a usual Sugar Baby compared to our watermelon population)
  • Control group with seeds from prior years (population from one or 2 years ago, compared to last year selection)
  • And all other ways to compare like bringing our seeds to a comparative trial

It doesn’t change the love we put in but helps with objectivity, so preventing the risk of becoming a merely ideologically driven group, “in the name of a nice idea”.

I’m saying that because my last year selection of melons proved to be 100% inconsistant this year, meaning I spent tens of hours in “selection” (for taste mainly) which proved to be 100% inconsistant this year : out of the average melon patch came as many average and very good melons, than in the patch I only sowed “very good” melons from 2024. Doesn’t mean the overall population is not making progress towards adaptation, doesn’t mean my direct sowing selection is not efficient, but that my “taste selection” didn’t prove to be efficient. And then for those other potential “gains” or “wins” (vigor, etc.) my field design doesn’t allow me to know anything about that.

I’ll add up to that that my last year’s selection around earliness in squash (or what I thought to be earliness…) has showed to be entirely inconsistant this year: my “early” of last year sown next to other rows of “late” squash has proven to be… not earlier than the late.

Again this does not mean there is no local adaptation going on, it means that my intentionnal breeding was …b.llsh.t :joy:. So I had to get back to something more precise that I could go into into another topic (the how to eliminating “false early types” of last year for ex., meaning more understandings of plant physiology as looked into at harvest)

I am not meaning that we all have to do that : the smaller gardeners, or the most beginners certainly don’t have to do that, as it sounds very complicated, but for those actively involved in breeding, and notably in not too challenging environments (in which making a harvest is already an achievement that proves local adaptation), I really believe that it has to come in the picture in some years’ field design, at least…

Doesn’t change the love we put in, but on the contrary on the long run it will help build and expand the movement by giving more keys, leverage, new lines of thoughts… very basic stuff: are we showing any success? How do we know that? So to me, and talking about Going to Seed as a movement I’m part of, I would say it’s a need.

One ideal field design proving our claim being a comparative trial in local market gardening farms in low input systems: are we doing better or not? It’s what I did with watermelons this year and the results were very good in terms of growth: doing better than the usual Sugar Baby. Yields and Taste haven’t been comparatively tried unfortunately. And also I don’t have any picture…

Overall what I’m saying is kind of basic and I’m just reinjecting usual lines of thoughts of every breeder, “conventional” or not: this need to achieve a minimal level of knowing what we otherwise could only be claiming. How do we achieve that?

5 Likes
'Landrace Gardening' -- alternate outreach -- 'Adaptation Agriculture'
The Goingtoseed wishlist thread
2

It will be a lot of fun when we can run those experiments properly!

So far my garden is only 2 years old, but I have made some observations:

  • some of my tomato populations do better than others in terms of earliness. This may or may not be a result of selecting through direct sowing
  • some plants are productive even if I neglect them a bit
  • seeds not being “true to type” is not as big of an issue as conventional wisdom makes it to be

In the future, we could compare our selected populations to store bought varieties or even to the ancestors of our populations.

I think I’m not ready for that, but are there gardeners who already have 4-5 years old selected populations in our community?

4 Likes
3

There definitely are! I’m on my fourth year of selection with pepo squashes, for instance. :blush:

3 Likes
4

Yes too there, 4th year in some cucurbits… including a huge failure year :person_shrugging:2023 :blush:

2 Likes
5

:laughing: We all have a huge failure year sometimes, I think.

And/or sometimes years when the “huge failure” was the gardener forgetting to plant certain seeds . . . :rofl: (That’s been me!)

1 Like
6

What are the top 3 improvements we want to show? Let’s plan a trial for this year to have more data. I like the idea of using a comparison variety. What is most important to you?

Drought tolerance, earliness/short season, best flavor, resistance to pests and disease. … ???

2 Likes
7

I vote for drought tolerance. Pest/disease resistance and heat tolerance would be good too.

Is there a way for people to make survey posts where everyone can vote for the different options? That would be interesting.

8

My take on that is that could be implemented a 2 levels of data gathering, which both signal true “adaptation”, thus making it accessible to everybody at 1st level - 2nd level being optional, a lot more demanding, so for more advanced growers- :

  • 1st level : PICTURES, centered on PLANT HEALTH, of our populations benchmarked with one or 2 well-known varieties
  • 2nd level : coupled MEASUREMENT of YIELD and sensory EVALUATION of TASTE. Also benchmarked with 1 or 2 well-known varieties.

So that’s 3 criteria, starting with a first being kind of the easily observable minimum threshold that signals “adaptation” straightforwardedly, with zero need for advanced knowledge.

Longer rationale in there : which data signals adaptation.pdf (18.3 KB) - PDF created to keep that core reply short -.

1 Like
Thomas cucurbits' summer 2025
9

I think it will take a lot more than a few variety trials to prove anything. You may get the result of that trial, in that location, in that season, but not much else.

1 Like
10

Yes, but you’re missing the point : we’re talking of a group effort, not of an individual effort there. And before “proving” anything, about how we do assess our adaptation/selection progresses. Things and set ups relatively simple that help individuals and the group verify its “adaptation” claims, and then progress collectively.

11

I would suggest NOT using yield as one of the criteria. So much of conventional breeding is focused on yield at the expense of everything else - nutrition, resilience, flavor, etc. - that locally adapted varieties are probably less likely to be winners in the yield category. To put it another way, we may have to sacrifice some yield to get the other qualities we’re looking for.

3 Likes
12

It’s why I coupled yield with taste above, developed the “why” in the PDF, and made it even more explicit in this post from this morning, relatively to squash specifics : Thomas cucurbits' summer 2025 - #110 by ThomasPicard

1 Like
13

Hi Masha, I’d agree that yield by itself wouldn’t be a good criteria. But if we rephrased it as “yield without pest control inputs” or “yield without irrigation”, then that might be a good criteria, since conventional varieties are often bred with the expectation that they will be protected from pests, etc. And since our landraces and the controls would have the same conditions, this could be a good test.

4 Likes
14

Yes, I agree. Though even so, a fairer test might be yield over a several-year period with fluctuating weather conditions.

3 Likes
15

I didn’t really expect that you were talking about something quite that simplistic. Quite a lot of rather ambitious claims fall under the landrace umbrella, several of which you mentioned in your original post. I’m still skeptical the credibility of the concept will be proven by even a large number of trials.

or maybe a few decades.

Will landrace crops really shrug off whatever the climate throws at them? Will they really be immune to bugs and diseases, including newly introduced ones? Will they really produce a harvest without water? Will those things come to be in just three or four years? Those things and more are in the marketing around landrace gardening, and some people seem to accept it as factual. It’s understandable that you are sensing a credibility gap.

It’s too bad I think because especially a beginning gardener that tries it is likely to just give up and go back to the grocery store.

Local adaptation certainly is possible. I’ve established that, even in my little back yard garden, at least to my own satisfaction and for my own purposes. I’ve adapted my practices, added new or completely changed the crops I grow. I’ve changed when I plant the seeds of some crops and how and what part of the plant I use as the produce. It’s taken decades and it hasn’t stopped. I constantly like to add new varieties and new species, but I do it by studying the seed company listings, sticking mostly with things my experience has shown have a reasonable chance of success and looking for mention of specific traits I want. I stick mostly to heirlooms and non-CMS F1 hybrids and by occasionally trading seeds. It’s important to me to harvest stuff to eat each year so I do not allocate my limited space to wild crosses or unknow mixes.

2 Likes
16

I think comparatively, yes. It is not a test of what the landrace crop can handle, it’s how well it handles those conditions relative to a commercial variety.

In that context I think the landrace crop would likely outperform most commercial varieties under low-input gardening conditions. And it would likely see greater performance with each consecutive year.

The genetic diversity of grex and landrace populations is a huge advantage over the inbred lines of commercial agriculture varieties.

17

I do think some people are overestimating how quick/easy this will be, and also how much care is actually needed to select for plants that are truly good in every generation.

But at the same time, I think there is already evidence that the method is solid, if applied with care and skill. For instance, Raoul A. Robinson in Return to Resistance describes something very like “landracing” in action in his book Return to Resistance; he also describes how local landraces adapted to resist a novel disease within a few years, while the professional breeders failed to produce a resistant variety.

There is a disease of maize called “tropical rust” caused by a microscopic fungus named Puccinia polysora. . . .

Tropical rust apparently arrived in Africa as a result of the development of trans-Atlantic air transport. . . .

Tropical rust reached East Africa, in Kenya, in 1952. As a young plant pathologist, straight out of university, I arrived in Kenya in 1953, and this disease proved to be one of the formative experiences of my career. On my arrival, I found government officials in a state of considerable alarm, because there were real fears of a very serious famine.

Based on earlier experience gained in West Africa, a team of scientists in Kenya had launched a breeding program for resistance to tropical rust. . . . In Kenya, the tropical rust fungus produced new strains so rapidly that each new vertical resistance failed while the breeding work was still in progress.

I myself was too junior to be involved in this work, but no one could prevent me from observing it with a lively curiosity. On my first visit to Coast Province, I was shown the disease. The maize crops resembled scrap metal in junk yards, with many leaves showing little but the colour of rust, with scarcely a speck of green to be seen anywhere. Many of the plants were killed before they could even form flowers, let alone produce seed. It was a depressing sight. However, matters soon began to improve. . . .

The problem solved itself. It did so without any help from either plant breeders, or plant pathologists. As we now know, the problem solved itself naturally, by the operation of normal biological processes. These processes led to a steady accumulation of horizontal resistance until the disease was no longer important. If we analyse just what happened during these processes, we can learn some important lessons on how to breed plants for horizontal resistance. . . .

Next, we must enlarge on the concepts of genetic flexibility, and selection pressure. As we have just seen, the African maize crops could respond to selection pressures during the cultivation process, because they were open-pollinated, genetically diverse, and genetically flexible. They could not only lose horizontal resistance, because of negative selection pressure in the absence of tropical rust. They could also gain horizontal resistance, because of positive selection pressure in the presence of the rust. And both of these processes occurred during cultivation. . . .

It will be recalled from Chapter 2, that the biometricians had developed their own method of plant breeding, known as population breeding. This method involves recurrent mass selection, in which only the best individuals of each generation are allowed to become the parents of the next generation. This is exactly what happened with the maize landraces that were exposed to tropical rust. When the rust first appeared, many of the maize plants were killed by it. Relatively few plants survived long enough to produce flowers. And only some of those were resistant enough to produce a few seeds. It was this minority of very susceptible but relatively resistant plants that became the parents of the next generation.

Had this disaster happened to modern commercial farmers, they would have rejected the cultivar, and replaced it with a different one. This, after all, is precisely what happens with the twentieth century boom-and-bust cycle of breeding vertically resistant cultivars. But the farmers in Africa were much closer to nature. They had confidence in their treasured landraces, and they resolutely refused to abandon them. They kept the few seeds produced by their devastated crops, and they cherished them. There was no question of eating them. Subsistence farmers eat their seed only the very worst of famines and, in this famine, the Government had provided food relief. So the farmers could keep their precious seeds, and these seeds became the parents of the next generation.

These farmers were all peasants. They had small, subsistence farms, and they were poor. Most of them were uneducated and illiterate. But they displayed great wisdom. This wisdom involved hope, patience, and, above all, a complete trust in nature. And their trust was magnificently vindicated as, crop after crop, their prized landraces slowly accumulated more and more resistance, and yielded more and more food, of the quality they liked best. This is the magnificent example we must follow when we set out to breed other crops for horizontal resistance.

As far as only adding varieties with known traits one wants; Robinson actually advises against doing this when it comes to pest resistance. Though it is probably a good idea when it comes to edibility, etc.

1 Like
18

A point of agreement with you is that I think wide crosses/crosses with wild relatives are not necessary in most cases, and might be counterproductive. Certainly better left to people with dedication and time to spare, for particular and defined reasons (like Joseph’s work on outcrossing tomatoes), rather than advocated as a general strategy.

But with that said, I think collecting as wide a palette of varieties as possible is important, because we don’t even know in many cases what traits we want. For instance, Carol Deppe talks about peas evolving to resist slugs by rapid elongation of the initial shoot before doing any branching. Nobody involved had thought of this way of escaping slug pressure; it showed up because they were doing breeding work without using slug bait, as everyone else did. It wouldn’t have been noted in seed catalogs or discussed by other breeders; it wasn’t seen as notable or helpful.

Also, in many cases many different varieties might have a few of the genes that, when assembled, will produce broad-based resistance to disease or drought tolerance or what-not; almost all important traits are polygenetic and additive. As such, even a collection of varieties none of which are particularly impressive themselves may be able to produce something greater than the sum of the parts.

3 Likes
19

I’d like to compare the polar melon mix and coastal sweet corn (descendent of Astronomy D) for earliness/ability to grow where other even early varieties can’t produce early enough (and still be delicious/yield moderately). Would need growers in northern climates for replications (like at least 10 people for useful data?). Also I think it would be great to do a replicated squash bug trial with a Maxima that is strong on the Lofthouse Maxima.

2 Likes
20

Wouldn’t taking landraces out of the context in which they are bred muddy the results?

As I was thinking about this, it seems there are two different things we could test: have our populations become better in some way? And: how well does the adaptive/landrace process work?

It seems to me that to test the landrace process, we would have to create a starting population (maybe a dozen standard varieties) and then distribute it to as many diverse locations as possible, where growers would use that population to create local landraces. As far as possible, they would have to avoid adding other genetics. Some of the starting varieties would be frozen as a time capsule. Then, a few years later, each grower would grow out their landrace alongside each of the original varieties; the hypothesis would be that, in very different climates around the country, the local landrace would do better than all of the varieties which went to make it up. (If it did better than some varieties but not others, growers could have simply chosen the best varieties, without all the genetic recombination.)

Though testing the populations we’ve come up with would also be interesting, to see just how cold hardy/disease resistant they really are.