Red-podded peas

[joseph]

I've been working for 4 growing seasons on a project to develop red-podded peas. I found this in my garden today just before sunset.

[ddsack]

Great color! Are they to be eaten like Snow Peas, or do you let them fill out? How did you manage to get the red color in them?

[Jayc]

Well done, it's a beauty.

[KarenO]

Very interesting and pretty Joseph. I can see chefs loving those. congrats on your success with 4 years of work behind it!
Karen

[BucksCountyGirl]

Beautiful!

[linzelu100]

Oh that's cool! I read about a woman online, who has been develeping them in the UK. It was real interesting.

[joseph]

Rebsie Fairholm from the UK was my inspiration for this project. About 5 years ago I saw a photo that she posted of a red-podded pea and the methods she used to create it. Gorgeous! Red is obtained in pea pods by red pigments over a base color of yellow. Red over green produces purple pods. Alan Kapuler's Sugar Magnolia was the purple parent. I've forgotten the name of the yellow parent if I ever even knew it.

So I crossed a yellow podded snow pea with a purple podded snap pea. The flowers self pollinate very early: By the time the petals start to unfold the flower has already been pollinated. The F1 produced a fibrous green pod with a blush of purple. The F2 produced lots of variety: Pod colors were yellow, green, red, and purple. There were snap peas, snow peas, and what I am calling soup peas because they were fibrous podded. There were some that look like they might be good as garden shelling peas. Seed was so precious last year that I only tasted the green podded sugar snaps and snow peas. They tasted like peas... Last year I only had an occasional red-colored pod. This year I have whole rows from red-podded parents. I expect to be able to start selecting for taste. I've got about 500 plants growing, so that'll give me plenty to choose from.

I saved the seeds with notes about what the mothers were like and then replanted into rows of similar types: red/soup, yellow/snow, green/snap, purple/snap, etc... I didn't harvest every possible type, for example there wasn't a red/snap pea, but there was a red/snow pea. The photo I posted yesterday was from the red/soup parents. It is still possible that they might produce red podded snow peas or red podded sugar snaps because the edible pod traits are recessive. They will not produce green or purple pods, but there are a few yellow pods because at least one of the genes for red pigment in the pods is a dominant gene.

The parents looked like this:
X

The children looked like this:

[MrBig46]

Very interesting.
Vladimír

[carolyn137]

http://daughterofthesoil.blogspot.co...ea-update.html

Joseph, is the person above the one you refer to? If so she had her red podded pea stabilized in 2008.

It was interesting to me to read her blog and note what she used as parents, etc.

So there already was a red podded pea but you wanted to develop another one yourself?

Carolyn

[joseph]

carolyn137: Yup. That's the Rebsie that introduced me to the idea of red-podded peas and taught me about the genetics of pea pod color. She also taught me how to manually cross-pollinate peas.

Rebsie provided the first photo I ever saw of red-podded peas.

https://farm4.static.flickr.com/3154...d7bb9ec9_o.jpg

Rebsie was working with snow peas. Some of the varieties that I expect to emerge from my project are red-podded and yellow-podded sugar snap peas. Those are what I am most interested in. I won't outright discard the red-podded snow peas that show up, but as a market-farmer I don't like snow peas because it takes a lot more of them to fill a basket compared to sugar snap peas.

Eventually I want to create red-podded and yellow-podded garden shelling peas. Those would look fantastic on the table at the farmer's market.

[linzelu100]

Yes, Rebsie. That's the lady I was speaking of. It's all very interesting. I'd like to know what they taste like when they are red. I think the yellows taste like mushrooms a bit, and the greens like grassy-spring flavor. WHat do the reds taste like to you?

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by joseph

carolyn137: Yup. That's the Rebsie that introduced me to the idea of red-podded peas and taught me about the genetics of pea pod color. She also taught me how to manually cross-pollinate peas.

Rebsie provided the first photo I ever saw of red-podded peas.
Rebsie was working with snow peas. Some of the varieties that I expect to emerge from my project are red-podded and yellow-podded sugar snap peas. Those are what I am most interested in. I won't outright discard the red-podded snow peas that show up, but as a market-farmer I don't like snow peas because it takes a lot more of them to fill a basket compared to sugar snap peas.

Eventually I want to create red-podded and yellow-podded garden shelling peas. Those would look fantastic on the table at the farmer's market.

I've grown several different edible podded peas, starting withat very first one, and I think you should consider Cascadia as one to cross with, b'c it tastes great, is very productive and doesn't have real long vines. I grew it just with a bit of support from some branches I collected here and there.

Another thought for breeding might be Golden Sweet, edible podded and it's one of the few edible podded ones in the SSE Collection of 1200 pea varieties. originally from India. I've grown it, but was less than thrilled with the taste, but as a parent it might have something to offer as to drought tolerance and also the color which it may impart to another parent and the subsequent selections . And it's available, which is an important consideration.

Carolyn

[joseph]

The main patch of peas is now fruiting. I have found perhaps two dozen red-podded pea plants and marked them so that I can identify them later. Most of them are soup peas. I call them that because they have fibrous pods so they are not good eating as edible-pod peas, and they are not tasty enough to be marketed as shelling peas.

There were also a few red-podded sugar snap peas and red-podded snow peas.

[ginger2778]

Joseph, I can't contribute much to this thread because I don't know anything about the genetics, but those are so beautiful, I would buy those in a heartbeat! When you get them stable, I hope you will market the seeds.
Very exciting to see.

[joseph]

I am sharing as much seed as I can as quickly as possible but I only get one crop per year. Someone else might beat me to stability and wide-spread sharing (I'm thinking of a pal living in a climate where 3 pea crops per year is possible).