There is no substitution for open pollination.
The most important feature of open pollination is that any small part (even a single bud) of the entire plant colony will contain seeds from any one of many males. There is great diversity such that even if only that small part survived the collective genes can make it through to the new cohort of harvested or surviving seeds.
The way landraces are being ‘maintained’ indoors is never going to replicate this unless extraordinary measures are taken. Firstly would be the creation of a rolling pollen bank for every male ever grown. If the aim is to preserve diversity then no pollen would be discriminated and all would be admixed and kept in usable amounts. As seeds were grown out the male pollen would be harvested and the current females dusted with collected and stored pollen. It's an extraordinary amount of effort that needs to be expended. It's doubtful that it could ever even come close to matching open pollination despite this effort.
The open farmer would select his next generation seeds by finding a particular floral cluster he found favourable. This would then necessarily be the mother of his next crop, but the abundance of male pollen genes meant that his genetic diversity remained in that crop of seeds with disparate fathers.
The next cycle of selection based on the female floral cluster would again bring him more and more possibility of the selected gene for potency and medicine production becoming a female inherited trait or gene.
The lesson might be that if nature is to be believed the genes unique to the male have little bearing on medicine production.
If it doesn't make sense it's probably because I was super high when I wrote it, if it's correct then the reason is again that I was super high
The most important feature of open pollination is that any small part (even a single bud) of the entire plant colony will contain seeds from any one of many males. There is great diversity such that even if only that small part survived the collective genes can make it through to the new cohort of harvested or surviving seeds.
The way landraces are being ‘maintained’ indoors is never going to replicate this unless extraordinary measures are taken. Firstly would be the creation of a rolling pollen bank for every male ever grown. If the aim is to preserve diversity then no pollen would be discriminated and all would be admixed and kept in usable amounts. As seeds were grown out the male pollen would be harvested and the current females dusted with collected and stored pollen. It's an extraordinary amount of effort that needs to be expended. It's doubtful that it could ever even come close to matching open pollination despite this effort.
The open farmer would select his next generation seeds by finding a particular floral cluster he found favourable. This would then necessarily be the mother of his next crop, but the abundance of male pollen genes meant that his genetic diversity remained in that crop of seeds with disparate fathers.
The next cycle of selection based on the female floral cluster would again bring him more and more possibility of the selected gene for potency and medicine production becoming a female inherited trait or gene.
The lesson might be that if nature is to be believed the genes unique to the male have little bearing on medicine production.
If it doesn't make sense it's probably because I was super high when I wrote it, if it's correct then the reason is again that I was super high