[CH] disappearing varieties
Margaret Lauterbach (melauter@earthlink.net)
Sat, 05 Apr 2003 14:01:32 -0700
Dave, do you grow any of your own seeds? I wonder if you could contract
with growers to grow OP varieties for you. I've obtained many varieties
via seed swapping, but I have few whose lineage I tried to
restrict. Perhaps with a concerted effort at growing true, growers could
supply enough seed for commercial use. I hate to see varieties of good
chiles disappear. Margaret L
Hi Brent and everyone else:
I 'm always on the lookout for new seed varieties to offer and I'm
convinced that
Asia has basically abandoned older Open Pollinated varieties and gone
Hybrid. I
have a beautiful seed catalog from Tokita Seed Co Ltd of Nakagawa Japan and of
the 11 varieties listed, 10 are F1 hybrids. The one open pollinated variety is
Santaka. The catalog is a couple of years old, so I don't know if Tokita
still offers
Santaka. The english version of their web site only mentions varieties of a
couple of
other veggies. I do have a source for Santaka and offer it at my web site.
I've run into the same problem trying to find OP varieties in China and
India. While I
don't have an objection to F1 hybrids and even offer a few varieties, I've
always
been a fan of people being able to save their own seeds. The other problems
with
hybrid varieties is that they often aren't around for very long unless they
sell
extremely well and of course they cost about 100 times more than OP
varieties. I'm
extremely concerned about the possibility of Genetic Modification of
Peppers. While
I'm not aware that it's been done, it's certainly in the mission statements
of a lot of
big seed companies.
Dave Anderson
TLCC
http://www.tough-love.com