Seed Breeding Projects

Sweet Corn – 2010: Year Three of Ongoing Project

Cooperative Participatory Plant Breeding Sweet Corn Project with Organic FarmingWorks, University of Wisconsin, and Organic Seed Alliance

img_27362Project Manager: Martin Diffley
Project Adviser: Dr. Bill Tracy and Dr. John Navazio

Objective: Develop a sweet corn variety uniquely adapted to the climate and field conditions at Gardens of Eagan. Desired characteristics include good cold soil germination and vigor with great flavor, sweetness, standability, resistance to common rust and corn smut, and yield large, well-filled ears.

Length of Project: 2008- 2013IMG_3581
Project Manager: Martin Diffley

Sweet corn is a mainstay crop for Gardens of Eagan (GOE), but the challenge is to find varieties that combine good cold soil germination and vigor with great flavor, sweetness, standability, resistance to common rust and corn smut, and yield large, well-filled ears. In a PPB project with OFS @ GOE, farmer-breeder Martin Diffley is collaborating with the University of Wisconsin (UW) and OSA to breed his own variety that combines these crucial traits. Dr. Bill Tracy of UW selected parents with variability for these traits and made a series of crosses as starting populations for the project. These crosses are the parents and the breeding will continue until a variety is created that meets GOE’s needs.

Long-term objective includes distribution of the open pollinated cultivar as Open Source stock 1) any person can use the seed for on farm use and save the seed 2) no one can patent it or any of its traits, 3) no one can take the variety and resell it without having an open source agreement with the breeder 4) seed would be available for breeders under lease to use as breeding stock.