Alan Holmes wrote:
"K" wrote in message
...
[...]
Why do you want non-hybrid sweetcorn?

So I can save the seed and get the same variety for the next year!

I don't think it would work; as I mentioned before, I think all sweet
corn, like all our cereals, is the product of hybridisation. It depends
how choosy you are, but the best bet would, I suppose, be to try to
find a few older non-F1 varieties and try them all. I imagine three
years would be quite ample to discover which one was the most stable.
The problem would be, as Nick says, that this country hasn't really got
the climate for maize, so your selection would probably not be as
useful a cropper here as the expensive recent hybrids which have been
bred for earliness in our conditions.

Your trials would, of course, be plagued by cross-pollination unless
your estate is very large. You could use a separate polytunnel for each
variety, though.

Having said all that, I admit that I'm thinking theoretically, and off
the cuff at that; you might in fact find that some of the progeny of
one of the new hybrids came up with the goods. But you'd still have to
devote a fair bit of time and space to the project.

--
Mike.