Oca: The next generation

Today I collected the first of my second generation crosses.  These are the first seeds produced by plants that we grew from seed.

Hopefully the first of many, although I won’t inflict you with any more pictures of seeds in bags.  Since I don’t know the characteristics of many of the parent plants at this point, I am blindly crossing them.  I hope to go about this in a more directed fashion in the future when I have collected more information.  Once I have harvested all of the 2013 and 2014 varieties this fall, I will be able to use the information to select what I think are the more interesting crosses from those that I am making now.

Still, for an octaploid crop like oca, it will take several generations of data to even begin to understand what each variety is likely to contribute.  This is a long term process.

But, I’ve just taken the second step.

If you are interested in minutiae, those crosses are:

((Bolivian Red x Hopin) = 1x17x11) x (1x11x04 = (Hopin x Mexican Red))

and

((Hopin x Mexican Red) = 1x11x03) x OE Orange