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Old 21-05-2008, 01:04 PM posted to alt.permaculture
Chookie Chookie is offline
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First recorded activity by GardenBanter: Jul 2006
Posts: 301
Default How can seeds be organic AND F1 hybrid?

In article ,
hyperspacechase wrote:

Maybe I don't know enough about hybrid seeds but saving seeds from F1
hybrid plants (in my case sweetcorn and broccoli) and sowing them the
following year had disasterous results. Surely this means that the
seeds are "tampered with" yet some are considered organic. I am
confused.


An F1 hybrid, AFAIK, is just a cross that produces offspring whose progeny is
either unviable or not-true-to-type (eg, mating a horse and donkey produces a
mule, but a mule won't produce little mules because it is sterile). F1
hybrids have improved characteristics, but you have to repeat the cross to
reproduce the same hybrid. So yes, you can have an organically grown F1
hybrid, but you won't be able to propagate it from its own seed. This is part
of the normal kind of hybridisation that humans (and nature) have been doing
from time immemorial.

Cutting and splicing completely unrelated and unbreedable (my neologism for
today!) genes produces a GMO.

--
Chookie -- Sydney, Australia
(Replace "foulspambegone" with "optushome" to reply)

http://chookiesbackyard.blogspot.com/