Pulsegleaner
Garden Master
- Joined
- Apr 18, 2014
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- Location
- Lower Hudson Valley, New York
Hi all
After so though last night I have decided I am willing to stick my emotional neck out again and let some other people give me a hand with one of my plant projects, if they are willing.
The project I am thinking of is my test of some black skinned cowpeas of (probable) Vietnamese* origin that appear to have an odd trait, namely that a large number of the seeds appear to have cotyledons that are green instead of white. This is, of course, a common enough thing in English Peas and soybeans (and I know it occurs in a lot of other legumes as well, like chickpeas, lentils, Siberian peas and so on) but I was not aware it could occur in cow peas. So I feel it is of interest to do a variation of the chickpea trial** and try and plant these to see if this is in fact genetic (as opposed to shipments of slightly immature cow peas getting sold).
So here is the deal I am proposing. As of the last time I checked it will be a simple matter for me to get more of the cow peas in question; enough to share with anyone who wants them, and I am willing to do so.
Now here is the catch I mentioned. What I DON'T think I will have the energy to do is flick a bit off each seed's coat to check whether it is green or white inside (I did that for my own seed, but that took me the better part of a week, and I was just doing a handful). So If I send out seed, it will be raw and unsorted, and flicking will be up to the recipient. And the flicking is important to the project since I would request that those who are trying ONLY plant the green inside seed (or, at least, plant the green and the white in different places). If the green is like pea green, it is recessive and I don't want the results getting messed up by being covered up by dominant genes.
If it sweetens the deal there might be another benefit to doing this besides finding out about the green. If these cow peas are anything like those the first time I did this, they are diverse in more ways than seed innards color. I only got two plants to produce the first time, and both of those were white inside (but since that was a mixed planting and we are talking two seeds out of hundreds, I don't think that sample size is big enough to provide accurate results) but they produced wildly different pods. One (which I called Dead Man's Finger) was constricted, hard and reddish purple, so not of much interest. The other on the other hand became "Coals in the Candle" a thick podded, hyper juicy WAX cow pea. In other words there are probably good snap pod genetics hiding in this population, as well as some really weird stuff.
Oh and if anyone tries to cross them it appears at least some are black eyed as well as black skinned, so that would transfer.
*The current ones come in scoops out of a bin with no note as to country of origin. However as the last batch were Vietnamese and the otherwise similar Thai cow peas do not appear to have this trait I am working under the assumption that the bin is also Vietnamese.
** Someone had told me that most green chickpeas were simply brown ones that were picked young and dried in the shade. So I decided to do some growing tests to see if there were legitimately genetically green chickpeas too, by planting some green seeds and seeing if their full term progeny were also green which would prove it was genetically green. I did, they were and it does.
After so though last night I have decided I am willing to stick my emotional neck out again and let some other people give me a hand with one of my plant projects, if they are willing.
The project I am thinking of is my test of some black skinned cowpeas of (probable) Vietnamese* origin that appear to have an odd trait, namely that a large number of the seeds appear to have cotyledons that are green instead of white. This is, of course, a common enough thing in English Peas and soybeans (and I know it occurs in a lot of other legumes as well, like chickpeas, lentils, Siberian peas and so on) but I was not aware it could occur in cow peas. So I feel it is of interest to do a variation of the chickpea trial** and try and plant these to see if this is in fact genetic (as opposed to shipments of slightly immature cow peas getting sold).
So here is the deal I am proposing. As of the last time I checked it will be a simple matter for me to get more of the cow peas in question; enough to share with anyone who wants them, and I am willing to do so.
Now here is the catch I mentioned. What I DON'T think I will have the energy to do is flick a bit off each seed's coat to check whether it is green or white inside (I did that for my own seed, but that took me the better part of a week, and I was just doing a handful). So If I send out seed, it will be raw and unsorted, and flicking will be up to the recipient. And the flicking is important to the project since I would request that those who are trying ONLY plant the green inside seed (or, at least, plant the green and the white in different places). If the green is like pea green, it is recessive and I don't want the results getting messed up by being covered up by dominant genes.
If it sweetens the deal there might be another benefit to doing this besides finding out about the green. If these cow peas are anything like those the first time I did this, they are diverse in more ways than seed innards color. I only got two plants to produce the first time, and both of those were white inside (but since that was a mixed planting and we are talking two seeds out of hundreds, I don't think that sample size is big enough to provide accurate results) but they produced wildly different pods. One (which I called Dead Man's Finger) was constricted, hard and reddish purple, so not of much interest. The other on the other hand became "Coals in the Candle" a thick podded, hyper juicy WAX cow pea. In other words there are probably good snap pod genetics hiding in this population, as well as some really weird stuff.
Oh and if anyone tries to cross them it appears at least some are black eyed as well as black skinned, so that would transfer.
*The current ones come in scoops out of a bin with no note as to country of origin. However as the last batch were Vietnamese and the otherwise similar Thai cow peas do not appear to have this trait I am working under the assumption that the bin is also Vietnamese.
** Someone had told me that most green chickpeas were simply brown ones that were picked young and dried in the shade. So I decided to do some growing tests to see if there were legitimately genetically green chickpeas too, by planting some green seeds and seeing if their full term progeny were also green which would prove it was genetically green. I did, they were and it does.
