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.
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.
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".
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
