Annual Seed Spiel…Okay, we’re revisiting an oldie but goodie this week: Seed terminology and the common misconceptions around labels. As a small seed company we pride ourselves on strictly selling only open-pollinated, non-GMO and certified-organic seeds. What the heck to these terms actually mean and are they related? Let’s start with “open-pollinated,” a term referring to the way the plant reproduces.
Open-Pollinated
As opposed to “hybrid” or “F-1” varieties, open-pollinated varieties (OPs) are genetically diverse populations that are free to cross-pollinate within themselves. No plant is a poster child for the variety. Every individual’s genetic make-up is slightly different due to the free-flow of pollen (similar most wild species). You can save seeds on open-pollinated plants and get something that resembles the variety. You just need to save from enough plants to get a good representation of the variety’s diversity.
Hybrids
Hybrids come from two in-bred parent lines crossed by breeders to create a particular set of plant traits in the offspring. Seed saved from these hybrid plants will revert back to a hodgepodge of their parent traits. They often don’t resemble the desired plant at all. This benefits the breeder and seed company by removing the farmer from the seed work. This forces farmers to purchase the hybrid seed every year. Think of open-pollinated varieties as the free-love plants, and hybrids as highly arranged marriages. We mostly grow OPs on the farm (maybe 90%). Still, it’s hard to find good OP varieties for crops like cauliflower due to a century long neglect of classical plant breeding in favor of hybrid development. Open a Johnny’s seed catalog and almost every vegetable is a hybrid.
While some hybrid breeding techniques border on “soft-GMO” by some definitions, hybrid varieties can be produced and sold as Certified Organic. Hybrids aren’t bad, per se, but the industry focuses on these varieties to the detriment of our collective ability to grow, save, and adapt our own OP seeds.
GMO
Okay, what about GMO and Organic? GMO (genetically modified organism) refers to a plant that’s inserted with one or more genes to create new traits, often to confer herbicide resistance, viral resistance or insect tolerance. They are almost exclusively used in commodity crops produced on a huge scale (think soy, canola, cotton, corn, sugar beets). GMO seed can’t be certified-organic. If I buy a packet of GMO corn seed and grow it with the most ecological, practices possible, it still couldn’t sell that corn as Organic. Organic Seed must be GMO-free and produced under strict practices defined by the National Organic Program of the USDA.
Now here’s where it gets a bit tricky. Many varieties, both OPs and hybrids, are grown for years using conventional practices, (ie. plenty of synthetic fertilizers and herb/pesticides.) That seed could be grown out for a single generation in a certified-organic environment and be sold as Certified-Organic. As long as it’s not GMO, Certified Organic tells you nothing addition about that variety’s underlying genetics or past environment. Many Certified-Organic varieties actually don’t do that well in organic conditions because they were not bred for those conditions. Conversely, plenty of non-organic heirloom varieties will do great in organic conditions since they were bred over 100 years ago, in the absence of modern chemicals. Now that’s interesting, aint it?