Do You Know the Difference Between Hybrid and Heirloom Open Pollenated Plants?

What do you know about Hybrid plants vs Heirloom Open Pollinated plants?
Here’s the long and short of it:

An open pollinated plant has 1 parent; a hybrid has 2 parents.
Hybrid seed are seeds that result from the cross pollination of two inbred parent plants.
Open pollinated plants by contrast have only one parent line.
Many seeds offered for sale in packets, mail order and at nurseries are F1 hybrids, but there are many times that these plants won’t work. New varieties are created by a plant breeder, when they have uniform genetically stable inbred plants, they can consider creating new hybrids. To do so, pollen is moved usually by hand from the anthers of one inbred plant (male) to the stigmas of the second inbred plant (female). The seed will grow and as a result of this pollination is the ‘hybrid seed’. They are often preferred over open pollinators for a number of reasons. The parents were chosen for their strengths and to compensate for each others weaknesess, hopefully creating a new variety that is better than the best qualities of its parents.

Hybrids tend to be vigorous growers, uniformity of shape and earlier more sustained flowering., larger flowers or vegetables, or larger fruits.

Heirloom or Open Pollinated (OP) plants are simply varieties that are capable of producing seeds that will produce seedlings just like the parent plant. Not all plants do this.

Plant breeders cross breed compatible types of plants in an effort to create a plant with the best features of both parents. These are called hybrids and many of our modern plants are the results of these crosses.

While plants can cross-pollinate in nature and hybrids repeatedly selected and grown may eventually stabilize, many hybrid seeds are relatively new crosses and seed from these hybrids will not produce plants with identical qualities.

For example, each year new hybrid tomato varieties are offered. You may see them labeled as hybrids or F1, first filial generation (first-generation hybrid), or F2. These may eventually stabilize, but for the moment a tomato like the popular 'Early Girl' does not produce seeds that reliably have the features you expect in an ‘Early Girl’ tomato. Seed from hybridized plants tends to revert to the qualities of the parents, so tomatoes grown from seeds saved from your 'Early Girl' tomatoes might still be tasty, but not so early.

Anyone can select and eventually stabilize their own seed or even hybridize new plants, but plant and seed companies have recently begun patenting their crosses so that only have the right to reproduce the hybrids they’ve developed.

Hybrids should not be confused with Genetically Modified Organisms or (GMOs) which, can be any plant, animal or microorganism which have been genetically altered using molecular genetics techniques such as gene cloning and protein engineering. Plants like corn that has the pesticide Bt engineered into its genetic makeup to make it resistant to certain pests are GMO crops. Bt is a natural pesticide, but it would never naturally find its way into corn seed.

I personally like open pollinated plants. I like the idea of purchasing a package of seeds growing the plant, saving the seed from it’s fruit or veggie and then growing them again.

This provides my bee’s the work God made them to do, and I’m not playing God. I don’t want to be beholden to a chemical giant who might be the patent holder of a seed that I bought 20 years ago

Since the origins of Colony Collapse Syndrome has not been discovered yet, I think it best to go back to the old ways of doing many of the things of the past when it comes to gardening, and give our bee’s plenty of things to pollinate so they don’t wander into the Franken Fields of Corn.

To find out where you can order heirloom seeds that will produce year after year go to http://forums.seedsavers.org/ to learn about the importance of saving the seeds that we have for our future.

Happy Gardening!