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Originally Posted by lislaw
Yep, on reading the wikipedia article it seems to be more about cross pollination and new or variant species. It does go on to highlight the lack of pollination and seed production etc. It seems to me that f1 / f2 on seed packets is a good indicator that the variety is not one naturally found and is a hybrid of two parent plants. I can understand why if you wanted to propogate from seed yourself or wanted only natural/native species you would avoid these type of seed, but yes definately different from what my understanding of gm is. Still, good to know about it in the first place. Thanks
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saving seeds from F1's, some f1's are non seed making, some are non pollen making and they are all a commercialised cross breed. They do not breed true to like, so a parent plant say a tomatoe called shirley may have parent tomatoes called Alfred, Mary, Paul and Joe. If shirley seeds are saved they could be non viable ie not able to be fertalised and produce a plant, or they could be any mixture of the above leading to non reproducing plants, or non pollen plants, or any of the above parents.
F1 are owned by people who basically own the patent, lots are owned by monsanto, who want us not to be able to save our own seed, we will have to purchase seed, which lines their pockets.
Non F1 means you can get natural mixtures if you have two sorts of brassicas, squashes, tomatoes etc they are quite permiscuous whoand how many that they have sex with :) all sorts can come from them, some good, some bad. I save seeds where I can. some F1 I do sow but I dont encourage any breeding with them.