S3E4 Dulcinea Carrot

This podcast is for anyone interested in the plants we eat – farmers, gardeners and food curious folks who want to dig deeper into where their food comes from. It’s about how new crop varieties make it into your seed catalogues and onto your tables. In each episode, we hear the story of a variety that has been pledged as open-source from the plant breeder that developed it.

In this episode, we'll be talking about carrot breeding in general, and two breeding projects in particular. First, Claire and Irwin will tell us about the Open Source Seed Initiative-pledged carrot breeding populations that they’ve developed at University of Wisconsin-Madison. They’ll explain how the UW-Madison Goldman Lab is able to speed up the seed production process to fit it into one single year using greenhouses and vernalization chambers.

Then we’ll hear from Petra about the project to develop ‘Dulcinea’, a new variety offered by Fruition Seeds, which Irwin and Claire have collaborated on. And all three of our guests will weigh in on the basic steps of any carrot breeding project.

Full transcripts are available on the Open Source Seed Initiative's website at https://osseeds.org/category/free-the-seed-podcast/

S3E3 Festivity Sweet Corn

This podcast is for anyone interested in the plants we eat – farmers, gardeners and food curious folks who want to dig deeper into where their food comes from. It’s about how new crop varieties make it into your seed catalogues and onto your tables. In each episode, we hear the story of a variety that has been pledged as open-source from the plant breeder that developed it.

In this episode, host Rachel Hultengren talks with Jonathan Spero of Lupine Knoll Farm about 'Festivity', an open-pollinated multi-colored sweet corn that he developed.

Full transcripts are available on the Open Source Seed Initiative's website at https://osseeds.org/category/free-the-seed-podcast/

S3E2 Dakota Tears Onion

This podcast is for anyone interested in the plants we eat – farmers, gardeners and food curious folks who want to dig deeper into where their food comes from. It’s about how new crop varieties make it into your seed catalogues and onto your tables. In each episode, we hear the story of a variety that has been pledged as open-source from the plant breeder that developed it.

In this episode, host Rachel Hultengren talks with David Podoll of Prairie Road Organic Farm about 'Dakota Tears', an open-pollinated yellow-skinned, firm-fleshed storage onion that he developed.

Full transcripts are available on the Open Source Seed Initiative's website at https://osseeds.org/category/free-the-seed-podcast/

S3E1: South Anna Butternut

This podcast is for anyone interested in the plants we eat – farmers, gardeners and food curious folks who want to dig deeper into where their food comes from. It’s about how new crop varieties make it into your seed catalogues and onto your tables. In each episode, we hear the story of a variety that has been pledged as open-source from the plant breeder that developed it.

In this episode, host Rachel Hultengren talks with Edmund Frost of Twin Oaks Seed Farm and Common Wealth Seed Growers about South Anna Butternut, a downy-mildew resistant winter squash that he developed.

Full transcripts are available on the Open Source Seed Initiative's website at https://osseeds.org/category/free-the-seed-podcast/

Hi everyone! I’m here to let you know that Free the Seed! is returning soon for its third season. This time around, I’ll be talking with plant breeders Edmund Frost, David Podoll, and Jonathan Spero about butternut squash, onions, and sweet corn. Irwin Goldman and Claire Luby will be joined by Petra Page-Mann for a more in-depth conversation about carrot breeding and about collaborations that have come out of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s OSSI-pledged carrot populations. Free the Seed! is now on Spotify (http://bit.ly/FreetheSeed), and you can subscribe there, or wherever you get your podcasts. Please consider telling a friend about the show, and look for the first episode later this fall. Thanks for listening!

S2E4: The Dwarf Tomato Project

This podcast is for anyone interested in the plants we eat – farmers, gardeners and food curious folks who want to dig deeper into where their food comes from. It’s about how new crop varieties make it into your seed catalogues and onto your tables. In each episode, we hear the story of a variety that has been pledged as open-source from the plant breeder that developed it.

In this episode, host Rachel Hultengren talks with Patrina Nuske Small and Craig LeHoullier about the Dwarf Tomato Project, a collaborative, all-volunteer tomato breeding project. We discuss how the project came about, the benefits and challenges of having an all-volunteer team, and the pleasant surprises of plant breeding.

Full transcripts are available on the Open Source Seed Initiative's website at https://osseeds.org/category/free-the-seed-podcast/

S2E3: Rozette Potato

This podcast is for anyone interested in the plants we eat – farmers, gardeners and food curious folks who want to dig deeper into where their food comes from. It’s about how new crop varieties make it into your seed catalogues and onto your tables. In each episode, we hear the story of a variety that has been pledged as open-source from the plant breeder that developed it.

In this episode, host Rachel Hultengren spoke with Bill Whitson about 'Rozette', a new potato variety that Bill developed and pledged as open-source.

Full transcripts are available on the Open Source Seed Initiative's website at https://osseeds.org/category/free-the-seed-podcast/

S2E2: Lofthouse-Oliverson Landrace Muskmelon

This podcast is for anyone interested in the plants we eat – farmers, gardeners and food curious folks who want to dig deeper into where their food comes from. It’s about how new crop varieties make it into your seed catalogues and onto your tables. In each episode, we hear the story of a variety that has been pledged as open-source from the plant breeder that developed it.

In this episode, host Rachel Hultengren spoke with Joseph Lofthouse about his process of landrace breeding to develop varieties locally-adapted to the harsh conditions of his farm in northern Utah, and about the 'Lofthouse-Oliverson Landrace Muskmelon', a variety that came out of that breeding work.

Full transcripts are available on the Open Source Seed Initiative's website at https://osseeds.org/category/free-the-seed-podcast/

Episode one of the second season of Free the Seed! the Open Source Seed Initiative podcast


This podcast is for anyone interested in the plants we eat – farmers, gardeners and food curious folks – who want to dig deeper into where their food comes from. It’s about how new crop varieties make it into your seed catalogues and onto your tables. In each episode, we hear the story of a variety that has been pledged as open-source from the plant breeder that developed it.




In this episode, host Rachel Hultengren spoke with Andrew Still of Adaptive Seeds and the Seed Ambassadors Project about his work in seed-saving, open-pollinated variety maintenance and the process of what he refers to as ‘dehybridization’. Their conversation focuses on ‘Gypsy Queens’, a variety of pepper that Andrew developed and pledged to be open-source.



Andrew Still




Episode links

Find Gypsy Queens seed at the Adaptive Seeds website.

Learn more about the:

Seed Ambassadors Project: www.seedambassadors.org/.

Northern Organic Vegetable Improvement Collaborative (NOVIC): http://eorganic.info/novic/

Culinary Breeding Network: https://www.culinarybreedingnetwork.com/

Episode glossary

Hybrid: a variety produced by the intentional crossing two distinct, stable parental lines or varieties. Commercially available hybrid varieties are generally highly uniform (individuals in the population will all have the same characteristics) because the individuals are all highly genetically similar. (Hybrid varieties are also often referred to as F1-hybrids.)

F1: the first-generation progeny (offspring) of a parental cross. The ‘F’ stands for ‘filial’.

F2: the second generation progeny of a parental cross. Produced by saving self-pollinated seed from F1 plants.

F3: the third generation progeny of a parental cross. Produced by saving self-pollinated seed from F2 plants.

Open-pollinated variety: a population wherein the seed from individuals that have been crossed with other individuals of the same population will produce progeny that are characteristically similar to those parents and the population in general.

Off-type: an individual plant whose characteristics do not fit the variety description.

Rogue: remove from the field individual plants are diseased, or that either don’t fit with the variety description (if the individual is a member of a well-defined variety) or the project goals (if part of a plant breeding project) in order to keep them from contributing genetic material to the next generation (i.e. so that seeds aren’t saved off them).

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Free the Seed! Transcript for S2E1: Gypsy Queens

Rachel Hultengren: Welcome to episode one of the second season of Free the Seed!, the Open Source Seed Initiative podcast that tells the stories of new crop varieties and the plant breeders that develop them. I’m your host, Rachel Hultengren.  If you're new to the podcast, consider checking out previous episodes from our first season. If you’d like to learn more about the Open Source Seed Initiative’s history and mission, I talk with Dr. Irwin Goldman and Dr. Claire Luby in episode 2 about intellectual property rights in crops.

In this episode, I spoke with Andrew Still of Adaptive Seeds and the Seed Ambassadors Project about his work in seed-saving, open-pollinated variety maintenance and the process of what he refers to as ‘dehybridization’. Our conversation focuses on ‘Gypsy Queens’, a variety of pepper that Andrew developed and pledged to be open-source.

Announcing Season 2 of Free the Seed! the Open Source Seed Initiative podcast
We're excited to announce that we'll be producing a second season of Free the Seed!, the podcast that tells the stories of where plant varieties come from. We’ve had great responses from the first season, and we want to thank you all for listening! It’s been a fun journey to make these episodes, and we're excited to have the chance to do some more. In the new season, host Rachel Hultengren will be talking to four more plant breeders about their projects in developing new open-source pepper, tomato, melon and potato varieties. These episodes will be released sometime in late winter or early spring – we hope you’ll join us then. Subscribe to Free the Seed! wherever you get your podcasts.

Has listening to Free the Seed! inspired you to start a plant breeding project of your own, or to learn more about the vegetable varieties you eat? In preparation for releasing the second season, we’d love to hear your feedback about the podcast, and we’re asking listeners to fill out a quick survey for us. It’s brief, only ten questions, and should only take a few minutes. Thanks in advance for taking the time to share your thoughts!

Share your thoughts with us through our brief listener survey!

Episode four of Free the Seed! the Open Source Seed Initiative podcast


This podcast is for anyone interested in the plants we eat – farmers, gardeners and food curious folks – who want to dig deeper into where their food comes from. It’s about how new crop varieties make it into your seed catalogues and onto your tables. In each episode, we hear the story of a variety that has been pledged as open-source from the plant breeder that developed it.




This episode is a little different from the previous episodes; instead of a moderately uniform, finished variety, Rachel Hultengren will be talking with Don Tipping of Seven Seeds Farm about a diverse spinach population that he has pledged to be open-source. ‘Popeye’, which is available through Don’s seed company, Siskiyou Seeds, has been selected for traits that are important to farmers in southern Oregon, where Don’s farm is located. In addition to the details of the breeding work behind ‘Popeye’, Don shared his thoughts on broader topics relevant to the future agricultural system to which he hopes to contribute.




Find Popeye Spinach seed here at the Siskiyou Seeds Website



Don Tipping



'Popeye' spinach going to seed. (Credit: Don Tipping)



'Popeye' spinach growing in the field. (Credit: Don Tipping)
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Free the Seed!Transcript for S1E4: Popeye Spinach

Rachel Hultengren: Hello and welcome to Free the Seed! This podcast is for anyone interested in the plants we eat – farmers, gardeners, and food-curious folks – who want to dig deeper into the story of where their food comes from. It’s about how new crop varieties make it into your seed catalogues, and onto your tables. In each episode, we hear the story of a variety that has been pledged as open-source from the plant breeder that developed it. I’m your host, Rachel Hultengren.

This episode is a little different from the previous episodes; instead of a moderately uniform, finished variety, we’ll be talking with Don Tipping of Seven Seeds Farm about a diverse spinach population that he has pledged to be open-source. ‘Popeye’, which is available through Don’s seed company, Siskiyou Seeds, has been selected for traits that are important to farmers in southern Oregon, where Don’s farm is located. In addition to the details of the breeding work behind ‘Popeye’, Don shared his thoughts on broader topics relevant to the future agricultural system to which he hopes to contribute.

A heads-up about some of the sound quality – when I spoke with Don, he was out in his fields, and you’ll hear the wind blowing by a bit.

Our conversation started with Don explaining that his farm isn’t in a prime spinach seed growing region of the US, and how that inspired him to breed spinach.

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Don Tipping: I live in SW Oregon, which is known as the ‘banana belt’ of Oregon, because we have hot dry summers and cool moist winters. So a bit of a Mediterranean climate but perhaps a little more extreme in the winters. So typically spinach is grown as a spring and fall crop, just because it doesn’t do well in the heat we have here. But in early May, when spring spinach crops would be growing, it can easily get up into the 90’s which is not ideal spinach growing weather. So we hadn’t produced a whole lot of spinach seed after we learned when we did grow spinach for a few seed companies on commercial contracts that we were just not in the right area to be growing spinach because when it gets hot...

Episode three of Free the Seed! the Open Source Seed Initiative podcast


This podcast is for anyone interested in the plants we eat – farmers, gardeners and food curious folks – who want to dig deeper into where their food comes from. It’s about how new crop varieties make it into your seed catalogues and onto your tables. In each episode, we hear the story of a variety that has been pledged as open-source from the plant breeder that developed it.

In this episode, host Rachel Hultengren talks with Frank Morton of Shoulder to Shoulder Farm about his lettuce variety, ‘Hyper Red Rumple Waved’, and about his journey in breeding lettuce, from salad to seed. Frank and his wife Karen are the originators of Wild Garden Seed, a farm-based organic seed company based in the Pacific Northwest, and Frank has pledged as open-source not only ‘Hyper Red Rumple Waved’, but all of the varieties and breeding populations that he has developed.

Find 'Hyper Red Rumple Waved' lettuce seed here at the Wild Garden Seed's Website.
Frank Morton
Lettuce florets (Credit: Rachel Hultengren)
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Free the Seed! Transcript for S1E3: Hyper Red Rumple Waved Lettuce

Rachel Hultengren: Welcome to Free the Seed! I’m your host, Rachel Hultengren. This podcast is for anyone interested in the plants we eat – farmers, gardeners and food curious folks – who want to dig deeper into where their food comes from. It’s about how new crop varieties make it into your seed catalogues and onto your tables.

In each episode, we hear the story of a variety that has been pledged as open-source from the plant breeder that developed it.

We’ll be talking today with Frank Morton of Shoulder to Shoulder Farm about his lettuce variety, ‘Hyper Red Rumple Waved’, and about his journey in breeding lettuce, from salad to seed. Frank and his wife Karen are the originators of Wild Garden Seed, a farm-based organic seed company based in the Pacific Northwest, and Frank has pledged as open-source not only ‘Hyper Red Rumple Waved’, but all of the varieties and breeding populations that he has developed.

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Rachel Hultengren: Hi Frank, welcome to the show.

Frank Morton: Hi Rachel, thanks for inviting me. I’m glad you’re doing these podcasts.

Rachel Hultengren: Yeah, thanks for being with us today. So maybe you could describe ‘Hyper Red Rumple Waved’ for us?

Frank Morton: Okay. Well, it’s an upright leaf lettuce. It’s sort of a romaine shape, but it doesn’t form a dense heart. It’s very dark red, the leaves are puckered and savoyed. The margins of the leaves are wavy, that is the edge of the leaf is not smooth, but it’s sort of ruffled. It has good downy mildew resistance. I’ve gotten a lot of reports about its cold hardiness, and it’s a lettuce that, I don’t know, I think we introduced it about twenty years ago. So I’ve had to sort of refresh my memory about just it a little bit; it’s a lot of lettuces back there.

Rachel Hultengren: So it sounds like it’s been a while since it was released, but remembering back, how did you decide to take on this project of developing a new variety?

Frank Morton: Well, you sort of have to get back to where I was in terms of my farming life at the time. During that period of time, Karen and I were salad green growers, and we grew salads sort of on subscription for restaurants. It was sort of like a CSA, which is to say a restaurant was signed up for a certain amount of salad each week.

Episode two of Free the Seed! the podcast of the Open Source Seed Initiative.


This podcast is for anyone interested in the plants we eat – farmers, gardeners and food curious folks – who want to dig deeper into where their food comes from. It’s about how new crop varieties make it into your seed catalogues and onto your tables. In each episode, we hear the story of a variety that has been pledged as open-source from the plant breeder that developed it.

In this second installment, host Rachel Hultengren interviews Dr. Claire Luby and Dr. Irwin Goldman, two of the co-founders of the Open Source Seed Initiative.

We’ll discuss the importance of genetic diversity in plant breeding, the evolution of intellectual property rights as they apply to plants, and the efforts of the Open Source Seed Initiative to maintain fair and open access to plant genetic resources. Dr. Irwin Goldman is a faculty member in the Department of Horticulture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he has taught and led research in plant breeding for the past 26 years. His breeding program focuses on carrot, onion, and table beet. Dr. Claire Luby conducted her PhD research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the Goldman Lab, and was the first Executive Director of the Open Source Seed Initiative.

Dr. Irwin Goldman

Dr. Claire Luby
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Free the Seed!Transcript for S1E2: Open Source Seed Initiative

Rachel Hultengren: Hello and welcome to Free the Seed! This podcast is for anyone interested in the plants we eat – farmers, gardeners, and food-curious folks – who want to dig deeper into the story of where their food comes from. It’s about how new crop varieties make it into your seed catalogues, and onto your tables. I’m your host, Rachel Hultengren.

In this episode, we'll be joined by Dr. Claire Luby and Dr. Irwin Goldman, two of the co-founders of the Open Source Seed Initiative. We’ll discuss the importance of genetic diversity in plant breeding, the evolution of intellectual property rights as they apply to plants, and the efforts of the Open Source Seed Initiative to maintain fair and open access to plant genetic resources.

Dr. Irwin Goldman is a faculty member in the Department of Horticulture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he has taught and led research in plant breeding for the past 26 years. His breeding program focuses on carrot, onion, and table beet.

Dr. Claire Luby conducted her PhD research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the Goldman Lab, and was the first Executive Director of the Open Source Seed Initiative.

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Rachel Hultengren: Thanks for joining us today! Maybe we can start pretty broadly – what is the OSSI, for folks who have never heard of it before?

Claire Luby: So the Open Source Seed Initiative… it is a project to basically liberate plant varieties from the constraints of IP rights and facilitate sharing and exchange of crop varieties amongst plant breeders and amongst farmers and gardeners.

Rachel Hultengren: For those who maybe aren’t familiar with intellectual property as it relates to plants and might be familiar with patents for things like electronics or other physical invented objects, Irwin maybe you could tell us a bit about the brief history of IP as it relates to plants?

Irwin Goldman: Sure, yeah, and I think you know I’ve been fortunate to have a front row seat in that. I’ve been involved in plant breeding first as a student and now as a faculty member for the last 35 yea...

This podcast is for anyone interested in the plants we eat – farmers, gardeners and food curious folks – who want to dig deeper into where their food comes from. It’s about how new crop varieties make it into your seed catalogues and onto your tables. In each episode, we hear the story of a variety that has been pledged as open-source from the plant breeder that developed it.

In this episode we’ll talk with Dr. Carol Deppe about her OSSI-pledged variety ‘Goldini Zucchini’. Oregon plant breeder Carol Deppe holds a PhD in Genetics from Harvard University, and focuses on developing superbly flavorful, organic-adapted, open-source crops for human survival for the next thousand years, and in teaching others to do the same.

Full transcripts are available on the Open Source Seed Initiative's website.