Orange Speckled Paiute Tepary Beans, a new selection

[897tgigvib]

I think a post about selecting a new variety would fit in the Propagation section.

It is looking like the speckling on these beans is a dominant trait. Dominant traits are actually more difficult to settle in as pure. It may seem surprising, but the dominant trait shows even when the recessive non speckled trait is there. In the second generation, actually half of the speckled beans carry the recessive non speckled gene, and those got planted along with the pure speckled beans. Since the recessive non speckled gene one fourth of the time throws non speckled beans, and half of them have this, one of eight plants will make non speckled beans. That is just about what I am getting in my patch of them.

As I did last year, I am separating out the non speckled beans. (Those will make a nice variety too, of Bright Orange Paiute Tepary Beans.)

But for next year's planting I would really like to be completely finished sorting the new variety out. There are two ways to do this. I will do both ways.

1) In one patch I will plant the most heavily speckled seeds. (About half the seeds show heavier speckling, and I suspect those are what they call Homozygous for that gene. That means pure, or doubled with the dominant trait on both sides of that double helix DNA ladder thing.) In this first patch I must plant each seed far enough from the other that the plants remain easily separate growing, and save each plant's seeds in separate envelopes, but filed together for planting the following year, each packet with its own separate patch grown and planted the same way. All those that show even a single non speckled plant then get separated out and are not planted the following year. This is a form of "Power Selection" that is supposed to be very effective for selecting for a Dominant trait.

2) In another separate patch, I can do as I did this year, but only planting the most heavily speckled seeds, trusting that the most heavily speckled beans are that way because they do not have the recessive gene in them. It is possible that this is the way that gene works, and if so, none will show up with the non speckled beans. If that happens, the new variety will be stabilized by the end of next year. If not, that'd mean it is difficult to see the heterozygous state for this gene. Kind of like a gamble.

By doing it both ways, I am doing the best I can to stabilize a new variety as fast as possible. The first is most surely effective, the second is a gamble for doing it faster. Both ways actually should work. If both do work, then the new variety will have more "Founder" plants, with more natural genetic diversity.


The Chocolate Paiute Tepary is an easy to sort separate gene pool already of Large Flat and Small Smooth. I am finding some that separate easily out, some "Recessives" of slightly less deep chocolate colors, and some recessives of mid sizes. So these are making 2 easy varieties of Large and Small Chocolates, and all I need to do is select as I wish, the Smalls for deepest brown coloring, the Larges for biggest dark, best looking, and for those that make pods with 6 seeds in them. Big pods seems more environmental though, so uniformly good plants next year for them is kind of important.

Large Flat Orange Paiute Tepary is a straightforward selection for the fattest seeds. They are just about as large as Tepary beans can get, packed in their pods, and are somewhat cutshort actually.

Deep Orange Paiute Tepary only needs a good seed increase along with normal selections for best plants.

Bright Orange Paiute Tepary, the recessive to sort from the orange speckleds, will begin selections next year.

These names might stick, but if I do rename them, my first choice for names would come from the Paiute language. A second choice of names would be of the kinds of sandstones found in the Paiute's original country.

Photos to come soon. My new internet service provider, as fast and good as it is, has a monthly bandwidth limit, and photos and youtube really use up my bandwidth allowance. Considering upgrading.


I may obtain another mix of Tepary Beans sometime this winter, but these Paiute Teparies will be hard to beat! There is a Colonial Morelos mix, and some others that are somewhat mixed, probably because of a dominant trait...

 

[ninnymary]

marshall, can you post a picture of the bean so we can see it?

Mary

 

[897tgigvib]

I will after the first of the month. I'm already over my bandwidth allotment for the month. I'll be as effective as I can with my photos until I upgrade. I'll photograph several things at a time.

Marshall

 

[hoodat]

What is the advantage of this bean over existing varieties? Keep up the good work. A new variety is always worth woking toward. I look forward to seeing it in the seed catalogs one of these days.

 

[897tgigvib]

Hoodat, Tepary Beans, Phaseolus acutifolium, closely related to regular Beans, but with a more wiry set of stems and the pods that dry to a papery thinness that then shatter, are I guess all still Native Indian varieties. Many Tepary Bean varieties have not been selected for any adaptibility other than desert conditions. Some, and I am finding it to be more like most Tepary varieties grow very happily under other circumstances, even in my forest clearing garden. They grow differently under different conditions. Teparies can be dry farmed. They will make a small sprawling bush with small pods. In a well watered garden they will climb 4 feet and make relatively large pods with 6 beans in each one. Oh. Tepary Bean seeds average a quarter the size of regular beans. So a "large" tepary bean is almost as big as a small "bolitas" regular bean.

The shattering that Tepary Beans do a day or maybe even 5 days after ripening dry, is the real reason Tepary Beans are not a major commercial crop. They need to be picked by hand every 2 days or so. Right now, selection for "slow shatter" needs to be started on all the varieties. It is not what I am doing...yet...because I have only found one variety that is "slow shatter", and that is Mitla Black. I have been growing Mitla Black for years now, just not this year. That one actually really seems like it is not "pure" Tepary. More like a species cross of vulgaris x acutifolium. I am not crossing beans. Just selecting them.

So far the existing varieties available are far and few between, at least in most catalogs. Seeds of Change has a few, and Native seeds Search has a whole lot, but also has a smaller customer base. So the only real advantage over the other commonly available varieties is

These are not Sonoran Gold or Blue Speckled, or Mitla Black.

It really is only an expansion of available diversity. Maybe these varieties will increase interest in the Tepary Bean.

Tepary Beans do not at all get many of the diseases regular beans get. I think it is true immunity.

Tepary Beans have twice the protein of regular beans.

Tepary beans can survive on less water though the yield is reduced with not enough water.

Tepary beans can take more heat, and can grow in barely zone 4 Montana's short summer. They are quite adaptible to many garden conditions.

Oh. They are delicious in a Greek Ham Hock soup! They cook up like regular beans. Soak them a bit longer, and for regular bean consistency, boil at least as long. The darker varieties will darken your soup broth. I have not done a clinical test, but the Tepary Beans don't seem to cause quite as much "jet propulsion" as some other beans.

Popularizing the new (very old ancient) crop with recognizable distinct varieties might just get the big huge acreage plant breeders of the world, or maybe the small individual breeders with more brains than me, to develop a slower to shatter set of varieties that might only need a single harvest of which tractor machine harvesting would be possible.

Actually, my Orange Speckleds this year were planted near my Rose Bolitas, which are an old commercial variety of bush vulgaris. Rose Bolitas wins this year's productivity per square foot award. a 4 by 4 foot patch of intense planted rose bolitas filled a 12 ounce coffee can with 3 pickings a week apart, and then finished, leaving the area empty now for the Tepary to spill into from one side, and the Basil to flop over into from the other side.

If the Tepary varieties could only do that kind of production!

 

[hoodat]

Seed diversity is highly important. If we use productivity as the only factor to consider there will be less and less diversity. In 1969/70 a large part of the corn crop was destroyed when Southern corn blight struck. The fungus had discovered a genetic "window" in the genes that allowed it to enter the corn plant. This window occured in only one variety but that variety had been found to have higher yields so that over 85% of the seed planted those years were of the variety that gave access to the blight. Had there been more diversity in the varieties planted the impact would not have been so great.
Our best chance to avoid a repeat of this disaster lies with those who, like you, are willing to work with varieties that have less economic utility so that we have a "go to" set of genes to breed resistance into existing varieties. A variety that is less popular commericially may contain the genes that can save the day by being bred into other varieties to produce disease resistant hybrids, all working within natural rules. Nature never puts all of her eggs in one basket.