selecting a new strain, any advice?

[Nature's Babe]

Last year I grew some giant sugar snap peas, and while picking them I noticed one purple podded one among the rest that were all green podded.
I saved the purple pod peas to plant this year, Are they likely to revert to green? How many crops before I can say I have a new purple strain?

[Mike Vogel]

Hi there, Nature's Babe.
I think the point about selection for cultivation is that you end up with a proportion of your selection breeding the way you want it. The percentage will be small the first year, especially if the gene you want to bring on is recessive. So the first year you might get 10-20% of your plants producing purple pods. But don't despair; just slect those for resowing and you may get 50% or so the second year. And so on until almost all your plants are producing purple pods - say 90% - and you will be able to claim to have bred a new [sub]-variety, [i]Pisum sativum naturebabensis[i]. I don't know what the cut-off point is at which you can make the claim, but it will depend on the percentage of purple-podding plants you get from each year's sowing.
Good luck
mike

[Geoff]

It might be a downer but it probably already exists as a cultivar and was a stray seed.

[Nature's Babe]

Thank you both, I will give it a try and see what transpires. I have never grown purple peas and the supplier of the giant mange tout said there was no way a stray could have got in, my neighbours grow lawns and flowers not veg, so it's a mystery. The flowers are mauve purple, and we are not far from dungeness nuclear station...that can cause mutations I believe.

[Elsa]

There are purple podded mangetout peas. Maybe your green peas have dormant genes for purple pods.

[Johnboy]

Hi Nature's Babe,
I suspect that your seed supplier is speaking with forked tongue! I very much doubt that the seed company grew the seed Mange-to you sowed.
The most likely explanation is as given by Geoff.
JB.

[Mike Vogel]

If Geoff and JB are right, you will get an unusually high proportion of next year's sowings from purple-podded peas producing purple pods.