Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Genetic use restriction technology (GURT), colloquially known as terminator technology or suicide seeds, is the name given to proposed methods for restricting the use of genetically modified plants by causing second generation seeds to be sterile. The technology was developed under a cooperative research and development agreement between the Agricultural Research Service of the United States Department of Agriculture and Delta and Pine Land company in the 1990s, but it is not yet commercially available.[1]
I plant only heirloom seeds. Heirloom plants will produce seeds that will usually produce true to type plants the following year if you save (and correctly preserve) their seeds. True heirloom plants are often true to type after 50 or more years of being grown in the same area. I generally have very good luck with saving and using heirloom seeds from year to year - but, there are things one must know to do that - particularly about specific pollination conditions for each type of plant.
Hybrid seeds and plants you buy at the store/nursery are deliberately 'bred' to have more yield or better disease resistance through (mechanically) crossing various types of the same species of plant - generally to get 'best of breed' characteristics or to allow a plant type to survive under differing conditions from where it originated. Hybrid seeds can be saved and should germinate well the following season too but you may not get what you expect from them since they have one or more mixed up parent generation characteristics that could emerge. Pollination type and conditions in your garden may mean you get very different results than the producer got in their 'lab' environment.
Hybrids can happen 'naturally' too though - through pollination .. and not necessarily produce stronger or better plants as a result. If you didn't plant a hybrid yourself or if you are not sure how your hybrid was pollinated, I think it best not to save the seeds. If you do though, they will probably germinate .. that is not the issue.
GMO plants are the result of genetic engineering (deliberate gene manipulation), ostensibly usually to increase yield but that may be by making plant less susceptible to issues caused by pesticide spraying rather than strengthening the plant's resistance to the pests that may be the reason spraying is done. Unfortunately, there are risks: too much spraying often causes pests to develop 'thicker skins' ... and eventually be less susceptible to the sprays so more is required and when a lot of spray is used, the plants often absorb a fair bit of them too, even though it won't kill them.
In theory GMO seeds are only available to farmers however I would not trust that to last. And I would also not trust seed packets to be labelled to indicate GMO seeds. In addition, you may already have GMO plants in your garden if you live within any distance ... probably ok outside 20 miles or so .. from a farm where GMO seeds have been planted ... those devils .. wind and insects .. can mean GMO plants cross with your non-GMO plants. I would not save seeds from my own plants if I felt there was any danger there of cross-pollination with GMO plants, whether they could or would germinate at all.
Self-pollinating heirloom seeds should grow true to type if they germinate at all (and in my experience, germination rates are usually fairly good).
Open pollinated seeds are a crapshoot as to what they will produce, even if they are heirloom if you don't control their environment. Open pollination usually happens via wind or insects. If you want to be certain that you will get the same type of plant you had this year, be very careful how far apart you plant different varieties or if you cannot do that, time plantings of different varieties of the same species (or even sometimes different species which can cross pollinate) so that they come to maturity at different times.
So .. the answer is .. it depends. For my part, if I want to save seeds, I will go heirloom every time. And I will read up on how pollination occurs for that particular plant type. And I will take great care to dry the seeds well and appropriately for that type of seed. And I will start and plant them in the spring to give them the best chance to stay true to type - so I can also save next year's seeds.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
