Heirloom and Hybrid Seeds

Heirloom vs. Hybrid Seeds

To begin defining heirloom seeds and plants, all you have to do is look at the definition of heirloom in general. Heirlooms are items that have been passed down, unchanged, through the generations. Heirloom seeds and plants fit into this same definition and are seeds and plants that have been cultivated openly and without change for decades. They remain consistent year after year. Seeds and cuttings from heirloom plants can be planted and propagated with identical results time after time.

That said heirlooms are not hybrids and vice versa. Hybrids are seed and plant varieties that are created through the combining of several other varieties of plants through cross-pollination or grafting. These are seeds and plants that do not have their genetic base altered. Most times a hybrid is a sterile, can be grown from hybrid seed once and will not reproduce. If a hybrid does reproduce in following years, it will grow as one of the original varieties used to create it.

To sum it all up, heirloom seeds and plants are truly non-GMO. Hybrid seeds and plants cannot be heirloom but can be either GMO or non-GMO.

Reference

<http://www.heirloomseeds.com/history.htm>

<http://www.goodgirlgonegreen.com/gardening/what-is-the-difference-between-organic-heirloom-hybrid-and-gmo>

What are GMO Seeds?

What are GMO Seeds?

Let’s start with GMO. What exactly is GMO and what does GMO stand for? It is the acronym for Genetically Modified Organism. Okay, so what does this exactly mean? Genetics are genes, DNA, the base cells that are the blueprint for what every living thing is and will become. Organisms are all things living, from the microscopic to the huge. Plants, animals, viruses, if it moves and/or grows it is an organism. Anything that is a living organism or that was a living organism has DNA.

Science has come so far that it has figured out how to alter the seeds that grow our food on this genetic level. This should not be confused with the art of cross breeding as this is a whole new ballgame. At first this seemed like a good idea. Science was capable of altering soy seed and corn seed to make them more disease resistant and give them higher yields. In a world where third world countries still exist with starving populations, this was huge. No one gave much thought to the long-term affects that are just now starting to be known.

These crops grown from GMO seeds are cross-pollinated with the noxious weeds that have been a bane to farmers for centuries. Because the GMO seeds have been made to be resistant to the herbicides that kill these weeds, the weeds have become resistant as well. More and more herbicide is needed to control the weeds and more herbicide use creates more opportunity for ground water contamination.

Then there are the “organisms” that carry the genetically altered pollen, like bees and butterflies. The following excerpt talks about a study on Monarch butterflies.

The results of a 1999 study conducted by researchers at Cornell University suggest that genetically engineered crops also endanger wildlife, specifically the Monarch butterfly. These researchers found that nearly half of the Monarch caterpillars that ate milkweed leaves dusted with pollen from genetically engineered corn died within four days. A study conducted one year later at Iowa State University found that plants that neighbor farms of genetically engineered corn are dusted with enough corn pollen to kill Monarch caterpillars.

http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=george&dbid=207

Are you starting to get the picture yet? While GMO seeds were initially looked at as a “god-send”, they may not have been looked at close enough before they began to be used on a large-scale basis and that my friends is GMO seeds in a nut-shell.

Now that you know what GMO seeds are, logic tells you that non-GMO seeds are seeds that have not been genetically modified. Be aware that this does not necessarily make them or not make them heirloom or hybrid. It just means they have not been been genetically altered at their base cell level.

Reference:

The World’s Healthiest Foods <http://www.whfoods.com/>

Seeds, seeds and more seeds!

So it is that time of year again. The cold winter wind is blowing, we are all huddled up in our homes dreaming of spring and the seed catalogs are coming in the mail feeding these dreams. But wait… Heirloom? Hybrids? GMO? Non-GMO? What are these types of seeds really? They are the good, the bad and the ugly. In order to make for easier reading, these will be broken up into more than one post.