Dozens of varieties of sorghum and mung beans are growing at OSA’s California Research Field at the College of the Redwoods Organic Farm in Shively, CA as part of a collaboration with the Ujamaa Cooperative Farming Alliance. It is the start of a new community plant breeding project to develop adapted and culturally meaningful new crop varieties. These lines came from the USDA plant germplasm system – the system of seed banks which hold seed of thousands of crop varieties.
However, in order to test these varieties across a large participatory network and develop new populations from them, we needed to increase the amount of seed we had. When you receive seed from the USDA germplasm system, they are typically only able to share a small amount, perhaps 25, 50, or 100 seeds, barely enough to grow in one location. So this year, OSA has volunteered to plant that seed and increase it to quantities that can be widely shared.
The bags over the sorghum plants in the photo below are because sorghum readily cross-pollinates, and with scores of varieties being grown in close proximity with each other, these “tassel bags” are needed to make sure that each plant only pollinates itself and we end up with true-to-type seed of each variety.
Although the plants are growing well, the growing season is starting to end, and we don’t expect that all of them may mature seed in time. We’re hoping for a long, late summer to get the most seed we can! In the future we hope to share more about this project and about opportunities to participate.
