Which websites to buy seeds?

[olivier75]

Hello everyone,

I publish a first draft this evening to try to explain simply the state of the seeds today to remove the fears and misconceptions spread too quickly in - 140 characters like today, with scientific shortcuts assumed. I leave you to comment and I will collapse after further research and based on your reflections.

Variety, GMOs, biodiversity, hybrid, F1 hybrid, bans, amateur varieties, disappearance, organic, peasant, reproducible, yet simple words constantly swung in political struggles, without real understanding and out of context.

Biodiversity, the 6th mass extinction,
It does not concern vegetable gardens, or even fields, on the contrary. If cultivated varieties disappear, they are in fact, sub-varieties and variants, often not described, the nurturing importance of the latter means that each state and organism concerned keep them. the Norwegian world reserve being only a double, making it possible to recover by their owner the stocks in the event of problem, Syria there with its storage. We can talk about a decrease in cultivated varieties, and there are still many creations, but the diversity remains reactivable.
By our cultures, it is fauna, fungi and weeds that are threatened, not salads.

Organic seeds and labels.
No direct report, even if GMOs are prohibited, organic defined a type of culture which has no influence on the type of seed, do not forget that the labels are private companies whose logo can be recognized, or not , by the states, and that they are changing.

Genres, species, varieties and cultivars.
the genus and the species are the first 2 Latin names, lactuca sativa,
A species contains all the varieties capable of hybridizing with each other.
A salad is nothing, it's a lettuce, chicory, lamb's lettuce or grated carrots.
Batavias are varieties of lettuce, like romaines, there are 36 from a single seller on the internet. Love the batavia or I sow the batavia, heard regularly, does not mean much.

Reproducible.
The immense majority of the seeds marketed are fertile, it is the uniformity of the descent which is relative.
GMOs are generally perfectly reproducible, the prohibition of multiplication comes from legal protection by the patent, it is moreover mainly because of this and related contaminations, that they are prohibited on a large scale in Europe.
F1 hybrids are perfectly reproducible, but their descendants are very relative, also contaminating cultivated and wild flora, depending on the plants, negligible for tomatoes, strong for carrots.

Hybrids.
If the vegetable varieties were probably initially selected by choice of individuals, forced cross-pollination with the aim of improvement dates from the end of the 19th century, in particular by Louis de Vilmorin.
We can consider that all the current varieties are hybrids.

F1 hybrids, or 1st generation hybrids,
Concept invented in 1908! relying on the laws of mendel, allowing a first superior descent to the parents of stable strains, the crossing must therefore be continuously reproduced. both varieties must be grown and crossed each year.
the high price is explained by the double culture, the more complicated pollination, see with a brush and the enhancement of the patent.
F1 and Monsanto, now bayer, are not related, they are the inventor of the F1 variety like their big and small competitors.

[olivier75]

Why buy F1 seeds.
The goal of a cultivator, a market gardener and to produce food, sold by the kg, in his production the price of seeds is low, seeds more expensive, but guaranteed, allow him to produce more, earlier, with less treatments etc.
Producing your seeds alone also costs, know-how, space, and above all separation distances, a larger quantity is also preferable.
For the particular, according to the varied it can allow to treat less, produce in a short season etc.
Taste is also taken into account, f1 does not mean without taste, and less and less.
Buying from a specialist can also fund research, or just maintain varieties.

Why not buy F1 seeds.
In any case not by ethics, neither organic, nor bohemian, nor alter-globalist, but if your budget is limited, if you wish to produce some of your seeds, if their benefits do not interest you.
GMO
The GMOs that monopolize the attention are those whose principle is to resist a weedkiller, property of the same lab, commercial successes creating fortunes, abuses and pressures related to these colossal sums and monopolies, with the need to grow of our capitalist society, all that to make swallowing raw, by a European box and more ...
INRA is one of the inventors of GMOs, mainly for resistance to disease and drought.
The main shortcomings of GMOs are dissemination by crossing with cultivated and wild flora and, as with antibiotics, the progressive resistance of pests and diseases. New science, the consequences on a large scale only begin to see across the Atlantic.
The arrival of the CRISPR / CAS9 genetic technique will certainly upset all of this.

Buy seeds.
The fear of buying F1 seeds does not have to exist, quasi commercial guarantee of strength and success, it is marked roughly on the package, in the name and the description, the much higher price being also a sign.
Varieties protected by one or more patents are marked with copyright R, physically reproducible, production for self-consumption or sale are prohibited, or protected, the transfer of a production right, as for the use of a patent, being possible according to the will of the person entitled, obviously for the cultivators.

If it is even necessary to make even a part of its seeds, my opinion and to do it on current varieties and to buy the rarer varieties in order to maintain them in the catalog.

Olivier

[Did67]

F1 hybrids are perfectly reproducible, but their descendants are very relative, also contaminating cultivated and wild flora, depending on the plants, negligible for tomatoes, strong for carrots.

If I can clarify a little: as soon as a plant is "allogamous" (with cross-fertilization), "contamination", which is only a cross-fertilization, or "hybridization", is very low and even possible. likely. Insects, wind, animals do not know what pollens they are carrying ...

It is therefore quite general and in no way specific to hybrids (except that hybrids often concern allogamous species) while selection by "stable varieties" rather concerns autogamous plants (which naturally do not undergo , or very little, cross-fertilization)

But more often than not, this does not catch fire, because if the cultivated variety has serious advantages from the point of view of the farmer or the market gardener, left on its own in the wild, it is "re-tinned". Ditto for the hybrids resulting from these "contaminations" ...

[Did67]

We can consider that all the current varieties are hybrids.

I think it is better to say: "from hybrids".

Because indeed, apart from the "mass selection", the selection begins by "mixing the balls before drawing the lottery", therefore one carries out crosses between varieties or individuals considered interesting: such batavia which seems more resistant with such batavia which made beautiful apples, and then the following year, we cross with such batavia which has a pretty red color ... And we end up with 1 batavias of all kinds, beautiful, ugly, red, red spas, resistant ones, resistant steps ... The lottery what ...

And we will therefore identify those which are closest to what we are looking for: therefore the most resistant among the beautiful red apples ...

And we multiply it. And again, because genetics are big mess every time, we end up with everything ... And we take again the one with beautiful red apples and being resistant ...

And we start again ...

And re-brothel - but already a little less! (by dint of eliminating, some genes are rare) ...

After ten years, we finally have a new stable variety: 99,9% of the descendants have beautiful red apples and are more resistant (than the ancestors).

So I prefer to say that it is a stable variety resulting from a hybridization than to say that it is a hybrid. There has been all this "stabilization" work ... Which will continue with a conservative selection for the production of mother plants which will be used for the production of seeds ... Anything that drifts is eliminated.

While a hybrid, even if it is not F1, generally gives "anything" ... Hence the fact that cloning is used to reproduce hybrids: variety of fruit trees or vine or orchids or roses or potato or dahlias ... If you sow the seeds, rebelote: lottery, and the big nonsense!

[Did67]

I think that beforehand, it would have been interesting to evoke "mass selection", which is at the origin of agriculture and which goes back to approximately 10 years. Who made a vulgar "grass" our spelled and then wheat, a wolf our dogs, I do not know which bovid our cows ...

Man is just content to keep as seed the plant that suited him best ...

Little by little, a "drift" was introduced which created domestic species, then varieties adapted to each terroir ...

Some old varieties still come from this mass selection and not from “Vilmorin” hybridizations!

It is going very slowly. So these are processes that take hundreds of years ...

[Adrien (ex-nico239)]

It is much clearer .... Thank you

[sicetaitsimple]

Why buy F1 seeds.
The goal of a cultivator, a market gardener and to produce food, sold by the kg, in his production the price of seeds is low, seeds more expensive, but guaranteed, allow him to produce more, earlier, with less treatments etc.

Completely agree! This is what distinguishes us above all from market gardeners, we do not live from the sale of our products. And so we can allow ourselves a lot more imagination, especially in the choice of seeds. Personally, I tend to avoid F1 cars, not out of dogmatism, rather on a vague idea of ​​"low cost" gardening which makes me happy, it also applies to the inputs that I glean here and there.

In addition, the only F1 (zucchini) sowing I did this year turned out to be a complete failure! 3 scoops, 3 seeds per scoop, zero germination!

[Ahmed]

There is no direct link between "F1" and all the qualities that you enumerate, because it is necessary to know (and it is also true for the non "F1" ones) that the selection implies of favor certain criteria to the detriment of others: the taste, the hardiness, the nutritional value make it most of the time the costs because the productivity and the external characteristics (what catches the eye of the barge, or the resistance to shocks which interest the merchants) are privileged. Selecting on all criteria contradicts the very idea of ​​selection.

Unsurprisingly, our plants above all reflect the dominant values ​​within a system seeking first the infinite accumulation of abstract value and little sensitive to other aspects which, in a society of the division of labor, are taken care of by other institutions (which explains the prevalence of treatment of consequences and indifference to causes).

[olivier75]

Didier,
Yes, I just said, to go into the details, you have to document me more, check the memories, in addition it is a subject that is complex enough to be treated a little apart. For GMOs studies show contamination of non-GMO crops, across Canada, of several%. For hybrids, I do not think that contamination studies on native plants are done.
FYI, I cultivate F1 varieties, classics, rare, I make some seeds, and I intend to keep shallots, garlic and some potatoes in seeds.

Olivier.

[Ahmed]

Do not forget either that due to evolution, plant selection existed long before humans got involved! If the plants "take the trouble to make" beautiful sweet fruits with beautiful colors, it is above all so that animals consume them * and disperse their seeds (obviously, my formulation is a shortcut, since it does not there is no intentionality) ...

* And at the right time, when the seeds are mature: before this stage the fruits are bitter and green in color (the latter character being not very visible among the leaves).