2022 Little Easy Bean Network - We Are Beans Without Borders

[Branching Out]

Thank you @heirloomgal for the Rio Zape bean query. Growing dry beans is far more complex than I ever would have thought! For my first summer of planting dry beans it was so very interesting though to plant pink beans and end up with shiny black ones that are what I believe are called cut shorts, or squarish shaped beans. (I have not developed an aversion to cut shorts yet, but I am just getting started. Lol.) As I did not realize that they were not supposed to be black I paid zero attention to this anomaly-- until I opened one of the latest pods to ripen on an adjacent plant, and low and behold I had three dusty rose beans. The black ones were prolific and ripened weeks earlier, so the 3 pink ones were the only pink ones that I got because it was so very late in the season that no more beans of either colour matured. But I was able to pry open some unripe pods of the black ones, and for me it was so interesting to see the Rio Zape swirl and also to learn of how the bean changes colour as it ripens. This is all new to me! Once they matured to full black the swirl was no longer visible.

And being a tie dye enthusiast-- but not an artist-- it is my understanding that there is not really any such thing as 'black', at least not in tie dye. Black can have its base in red or blue, so I suppose a red-blue base would result in purple?? And very dark purple looks black? What I grew are really, really black and shiny beans.

 

[Zeedman]

suppose you could argue that every breeding project is supposed to be for the good of everyone, and so each breeder has an obligation to keep doing it AND handing out the fruits of their labors for free, that any costs they incurred doing that it was their DUTY to pay for the good of everyone else. But that sort of turns plant breeding from a labor of love, or even an attempt to better the human condition, into something like slavery.

Public domain breeding used to be done by the land-grant colleges... who being taxpayer funded, served the public. Still taxpayer funded, but breeding programs mostly serve corporate agriculture now, and patent their developments.

The PVP program was designed to allow plant breeders - regardless of scale - the right to profit from their work. Many of the new vegetables & flowers being sold now are PVP. The PVP Act allows gardeners to save seed, and propagate stock without limits - but not to sell it. All conventional breeding is covered by the PVPA.

Patented varieties, on the other hand (such as GMOs) can't be saved or increased without permission - nor even possessed without license. There have been some who tried to abuse the patent system to claim ownership over all varieties with an existing trait (such as yellow-seeded beans, or warted pumpkins) but those efforts have been mostly unsuccessful (so far). Universities now have embraced the sale of patented varieties... which having been developed with public funding, should IMO rightfully be considered public property. I reject the concept of considering any life form to be an "invention".

 

[Blue-Jay]

@Bluejay77 have you ever seen Rio Zape throw black beans?

No I have not seen Rio Zape throw black beans yet. But beans can carry genes for other characteristics. It's just when Rio Zape was created the characteristics that you see expressed in Rio Zape were the genes that were present in both the male and female parent and these were the genes that got paired up. I bought a book on bean collecting about six years ago (winter reading when I went to Florida) The collecting was for people who go into the bush or tropical countries and hunt for wild beans. There was some experiments discussed in the book about crossing beans of different seed coat colors. They gave the results of crossing white bean varieties with other beans that had white seed coats. Often they would get F2 seeds that had mottled seed coats. Those white beans that are a recessive characteristic contained those dominate genes.

 

[Blue-Jay]

It's interesting - I had a really easy time with it, though even @Bluejay77 mentioned I think this year that this was a late bean for him. The only thing I can come up with to explain that is my fervent devotion to transplants. lol Also, we did have a nice long fall.

Yes I have finally gotten around to the idea that some beans like Rio Zape need in my garden too an earlier start in a container of some growing medium and then transfered to the garden at a later time. My Ping Zebra's and related segregations all need this type of treatment as well.

 

[flowerbug]

...Those white beans that are a recessive characteristic contained those dominate genes.

for simple genetic combinations of dominant and recessive traits you will only see recessive traits if you happen to get both parents with that recessive gene to pair up.

since beans are often self-pollinating this is not a very frequent happening but once you have the recessive trait established it only takes one out-cross with a dominant gene bearing paternal bean plant to get mayhem...

beans however have a fair number of traits which are not simple genetics so some traits will be stronger or weaker based upon other genes (which may or may not be simple themselves).

 

[meadow]

from UC Rio Zape registration, emphasis mine:

"Like other beans with C locus-based stripe and spot patterns (e.g., pinto and cranberry types), a small percentage of UC Rio Zape seeds are reverse colored, with primarily dark purple or black, with lighter purple flecks on the seed (Bassett, 2007). These seeds are not off-types because their progeny revert to the usual color combination of black stripes on a purple background. Thus, there is no need to remove these reverse-color types unless the plants show other off-type characteristics, based on general experience with C-controlled variation in seed color pattern."

UC Rio Zape has Matterhorn (great northern bean) as the donor parent but it's about 98% Rio Zape. [eta: they make it sound like reverses are quite common with that type of coat pattern]

Does anyone know... When there are reverse beans, can they be mixed with regular colored beans within the same pod?

eta: it looks like it would be easy to confirm reverses by growing some out

 

[flowerbug]

...
Does anyone know... When there are reverse beans, can they be mixed with regular colored beans within the same pod?

yes. i've seen single reverses and i've seen every other bean reverses. so far planting reverses doesn't seem to always give more reverses back.

 

[meadow]

yes. i've seen single reverses and i've seen every other bean reverses. so far planting reverses doesn't seem to always give more reverses back.

Oh! I thought they produce normal beans without reverses. Someone back in one of the old threads did an experiment. Can't remember who at the moment.

 

[heirloomgal]

While I certainly do agree with you on principle. I can sort of see a bit of the argument on the other side. Breeding a good new variety often does take some time and, usually a lot of money, and I can certainly see the breeder wanting to recoup some of what he or she spent doing it. In an ideal world, I suppose, people would voluntarily give the breeder some funds to make up for what they spent (or we'd live in some sort of socialist paradise where earning enough to survive was never something you had to concern yourself with). But in this world, few people are going to pay for something if they don't have to. And if you are a very little grower, and the person who gets your seeds is a very big one, it's pretty easy for them to out-produce you so much that you CAN'T sell any of yours because they can beat you on price due to volume. If you're little known, they could even claim THEY created it and find some way to get exclusive distribution rights so you COULDN'T sell, or even grow, your own anymore.

I suppose you could argue that every breeding project is supposed to be for the good of everyone, and so each breeder has an obligation to keep doing it AND handing out the fruits of their labors for free, that any costs they incurred doing that it was their DUTY to pay for the good of everyone else. But that sort of turns plant breeding from a labor of love, or even an attempt to better the human condition, into something like slavery.

We're on a wierd mind link with this because as I was typing my response last night I was thinking of Milton Friedman and what he would say. I hold him in the highest regard, but I imagine it might be one of the few places where I'd feel differently than he would. As a believer in free markets, its all about what the market supports; if increasing wealth is the goal, then you gotta go where you can do that. There are limits to markets though, on multiple levels. Much like having a game of chess, you can't just change the rules or limits mid-game so that you can further your own ability to win. I consider this patenting of life many things, one of which is market rigging, avoiding or preventing competition, which is the heart of the marketplace.

There are innumerable people who have invested trmendous time, money and energy into a 'product' - sometimes it's there whole life's work - and didn't turn a profit. That's just how it works sometimes. Those investments don't necessarily mean they should get paid; if that was the case then the people who invented spray on hair and the urban window baby cage need to get paid. 🤣 Or even the couple a few years ago who spent years researching a 'special' name for the child they would have someday, hours of research and study of Latinate roots and horticultural terms, and when the child was born they wanted to trademark the childs' name, but couldn't. Much as they invested thier time, the marketplace (for now) doesn't support 'owning' human names and language. This is no doubt that heirloom seeds have never got much traction in the commerical world because as soon as you sell your product your consumer can reproduce if for themselves forever. It's a situation where you would be working yourself out of a job every time. It only makes sense that they weren't a good 'product' for development.
IMO if people who want to get into breeding OP vegetables they should be free to do that, but not look for rewards in that process that the market doesn't support. The heirloom seed world is no stranger to market rigging in this sense; I read not long ago the bush bean Peruano was claimed by patent in the 90's and nobody else was allowed to grow it or distribute seed. Patent was only lifted in 2008.

 

[heirloomgal]

Oh! I thought they produce normal beans without reverses. Someone back in one of the old threads did an experiment. Can't remember who at the moment.

I had a few pods last year that were 100% reversals, which is not something I see much. Usually reverses for me are one bean seed among the others in the pods. I think there was some environmental influence there because I had many bean reverses in many varieties in 2021, much more than I'd ever seen.