Maintaining Adequate Population Sizes for Seed Saving
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POPULATION SIZE Seed Savers Exchange Grant Olson
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Maintaining adequate population sizes for seed saving and long-term preservation or stewardship of rare varieties at home.
Transcript of Maintaining Adequate Population Sizes for Seed Saving
POPULATION SIZESeed Savers Exchange
Grant Olson
Our mission is to save North America’s diverse, but endangered, garden heritage for future generations by building a network of people committed to collecting, conserving, and sharing heirloom seeds and plants, while educating people about the value of genetic and cultural diversity.
population size
inbreeders and outbreeders
inbreeders are primarily self-pollinating:
pea, bean, tomato, lettuce
outbreeders are primarily pollinated by other plants:
cabbage, carrot, onion, melon
generally, outbreeders require larger populations
inbreeding depression
deleterious alleles
genetic driftimage source: gringer
over-selection
extreme inbreeders: 10-20 plants
moderate inbreeders: 40 plants
outbreeders: 80 plants
outbreeders sensitive to depression: 200 plants
outbreeders not sensitive to depression: 10-20
varietal history and population size
planting size vs population size
home vs commercial scale
reacquiring genetic diversity
use the SSE Yearbook to locate other growers maintaining your variety
contact SSE directly for potential sources
contact seed companies who have offered the variety in the past
contact other seed banks or use USDA’s on-line GRIN database (www.ars-grin.gov/)
additional resources
for more information:
Breed your own Vegetable Varieties, Carol Deppe
Seed to Seed, Suzanne Ashworth
The Organic Seed Grower,John Navazio
A Seed Saving Guide for Gardeners and Farmers, OSAwww.seedalliance.org/publications
