Episode three of the third 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 talks with Jonathan Spero of Lupine Knoll Farm about 'Festivity', an open-pollinated multi-colored sweet corn that he developed.

Jonathan Spero

Ears of 'Festivity' at milk stage, showing variation in color intensity.

Dried mature ears of 'Festivity'

The field prepared for planting during a year when Jonathan did ear-to-row selection

Episode links- You can purchase seed of 'Festivity' from Siskiyou Seeds, Restoration Seeds, or by emailing Jonathan through the Lupine Knoll Farm website: http://www.lupineknollfarm.com/ 

- GRIN system https://npgsweb.ars-grin.gov/gringlobal/search.aspx- Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties, Dr. Carol Deppe- Seed to Seed, Suzanne Ashworth

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Free the Seed!Transcript for S3E3: ‘Festivity’ Sweet Corn

Rachel Hultengren: Welcome to Episode 3 of Season 3 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.

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.

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Rachel Hultengren: Our guest today is Jonathan Spero, of Lupine Knoll Farm in southwestern Oregon. His plant breeding work focuses on open-pollinated sweet corn, which he has been working on since 2001. On his farm of about 5 acres, Jonathan also breeds kale, broccoli, sugar beets and a few other vegetables. He was a member of the Board of Directors of the Open Source Seed Initiative from 2014-2018.

Jonathan and I will be talking about ‘Festivity’, a multi-colored sweet corn.

Hi Jonathan – thanks for joining us!

Jonathan Spero: Hello, Rachel. Glad to be here.

Rachel Hultengren: I’m excited to get to talk about this new sweet corn that you’ve developed. And maybe we can start by having you just describe ‘Festivity’ for us. What does it look like?

Jonathan Spero: ‘Festivity’ is multi-colored, in that it has not only white and yellow but blue and red kernels. It has just a blush of color at the milk stage, that is, eating stage. But as the plants mature, they become more darkly colored like what we call an ornamental corn, sometimes. But it’s a sweet corn.

Rachel Hultengren: Mmhmm. So take us back to the beginning. How did you get started on this, and what was your goal with it?

Jonathan Spero: Well, the original goal was a multi-colored sweet corn. The colors are generally phytonutrients, or this is my premise, and therefore corn with color is more healthy than corn that’s just white. And so this was my initial purpose. I had tasted some multi-colored sweet corn that others have attempted, and thought we could create something that is sweet, open-pollinated,