Growing hops from seed

I want to start crossbreeding hops as well, but I have been unable to get access to any male plants. I don't want to buy seeds off of eBay because I can't trust their information about the lineage of those seeds. When I buy seeds I want to at least know which mother plant they came from even if the father can't be determined. I am thinking about buying whole leaf hops from hopsdirect or hop union just to get some seeds from a known mother plant. However, I don't know if those seeds will even grow.

Since I am having trouble getting male plants could you give tips on the process for trying to get pollen from female plants. I saw you mention colloidal silver.

Also, I read that you tried stressing multiple plants, but most of the time the pollen weren't viable. I also read in other forum post that stressed females usually don't put out viable pollen. Do you have any insight as to how to get female plants to put out viable pollen and produce viable seed? For example is self fertilization possible? Are some varieties more likely to put out viable pollen than others? Any help you can give would be greatly appreciated.

nagmay said:

Also, a breeding update:

Even after all the conversation on this thread regarding the non-viability of using pollen from hermaphroditic hops... I decided to try again. Pollen was collected from several monoecious plants. Most of it produced no results. However, I seemed to have somehow gotten lucky.

One batch of the pollen fertilized seeds on several plants. After a long stratification, some of the seeds are indeed starting to sprout!

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could you give tips on the process for trying to get pollen from female plants. I saw you mention colloidal silver.

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Everyone that I spoke to, including commercial hop growers and breeders, insisted that utilizing pollen from female plants was not a viable option. This seemed strange to me, considering that there is this "other" plant - a close cousin of hops - which is often bred by this method...

Application of colloidal silver is one way to stress a female dioecious plants to throw male flowers. I'll let you visit the forums for that "other" plant to learn more about the process and science involved. However, the important thing is to remember that the silver helps induce the creation of male flowers. It doesn't make the flowers any more likely to have viable pollen, than say, a plant that was stressed by environmental factors such as drought.

Over the past few years I have been collecting and introducing pollen from many different sources - some from induced hermaphrodites, others from natural ones. All failed to produce viable seeds until this last round. The single, successful sample was from a plant that went hermi on her own.

Now, there is always the chance that the successful plant was not actually a female. However unlikely, a stray male might have slipped into the yard and embedded itself directly where a female was planted. Therefore, I'm reserving judgment until I can sex all the seedlings. True feminized pollen should result in only female offspring.

That said, I do have a young neomexicanus male. If pollen or cuttings become available later this year, I am willing to share. @brewerelated, I believe you are already on the list.

Cheers.

Thanks for all of the information. Maybe I'll get lucky and one of my plants will get stressed out naturally. What you said about feminized pollen only producing females is interesting. I did know about that. I should also do some research on that "other" plant. If cuttings become available I'll gladly pay you for them.

nagmay said:

That said, I do have a young neomexicanus male. If pollen or cuttings become available later this year, I am willing to share. @brewerelated, I believe you are already on the list.

Cheers.

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There has been very little luck with methods of feminizing plants to produce seeds. The reports I have read about this have almost always resulted in no viable seeds.

It is very rare for a hop plant to pollinate itself naturally, even if it does have both male and female flower parts. This has to do with the fact that most of the time when the male flowers form, the burs have already started to develop into a cone, making pollination nearly impossible.

While I plan to experiment more with this in the future, based on what I have read, I don't have very high hopes.

If you want a true to type plant, you need to plant from a rhizome or transplant and not with seeds. You can't actually trust a majority of the seeds on the market because many of the breeders have no idea what plant crosses were done to produce the seeds.

-Brian
GLH

Greatlakeshops said:

If you want a true to type plant, you need to plant from a rhizome or transplant and not with seeds.

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@GreatLakes,
I love your hops and your business in general, but I think you missed the point of this particular thread. You might want to go back and read it from the beginning.

It also seems a bit disingenuous of you to discourage others, when, I know for a fact that you have started your own breeding program and collected a bunch of seeds last fall...

Though, I really hope the "high hops" typo was intentional

Edit - Looks like you corrected the typo. Oh, well.

nagmay said:

@GreatLakes,
I love your hops and your business in general, but I think you missed the point of this particular thread. You might want to go back and read it from the beginning.

It also seems a bit disingenuous of you to discourage others, when, I know for a fact that you have started your own breeding program and collected a bunch of seeds last fall...

Though, I really hope the "high hops" typo was intentional

Edit - Looks like you corrected the typo. Oh, well.

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I did read the whole thread, but was more so commenting in regards to a few of the last posts. I just forgot to 'quote them'.

I believe you to be mistaken on the disingenuous of my comment. We actually did not collect any seeds from the wild or sources. Instead we obtained certified registered male plants from the USDA and breed our own plants on site. This is significantly different then 'collecting seeds' and requires a lot more work than you may think when dealing with dozens of varieties.

In addition we do have a breeding program onsite to handle all this work including the proper facilities to maintain the plants. Since we have thousands of seeds on site coming from over 100 unique crosses, I think our comments on the viability of hop seeds may be more accurate than some. I cannot comment directly on the feminization aspects, as we have not played with spraying silver and only know what I have read. Our research is based on NATURAL hermaphroditic response as opposed to forced. In the case of naturally occuring hermaphroditic hops, you will almost never get a viable seed.

PS. I type the word hop so many times now, that my brain auto corrects the word 'hope' to 'hop'... haha.

We are not trying to discourage anyone from doing their own trials... Please feel to experiment as much as possible on your hops! Although realize that its not uncommon for thousands of seedlings to produce only one plant that will ever make the cut to become a commercial cultivar. It takes multiple years (7+) to get good results.

Good luck!

Fair enough.

Once again, I just want to reiterate that I'm a fan of what Great Lakes is doing and can't wait to seed what develops from your breeding experiments.

Our research is based on NATURAL hermaphroditic response as opposed to forced. In the case of naturally occurring hermaphroditic hops, you will almost never get a viable seed.

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Wow. I am starting to feel really lucky with the success that I've seen this year. This particular pollen was a from a naturally hermaphroditic plant.

Cheers.

Greatlakeshops said:

Instead we obtained certified registered male plants from the USDA and breed our own plants on site.

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Would you guys sell rhizomes from certified male plants? This would help a lot as then we would have a known male for breeding with known female plants.

@greatlakehops I hope your trails go well on your new hop breeding program. What flavor profile is the Willow Creek hop plant? I hope they will go on sale to us home brewers this spring. Thanks again for your hard work!

nagmay said:

Fair enough.

Once again, I just want to reiterate that I'm a fan of what Great Lakes is doing and can't wait to seed what develops from your breeding experiments.



Wow. I am starting to feel really lucky with the success that I've seen this year. This particular pollen was a from a naturally hermaphroditic plant.

Cheers.

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Thanks for the support nagmay! I didn't mean any comments to come off as harsh, which can sometimes happen with text.

I'm interested to hear more about your results with the seedlings. I'm sure we will be announcing more info about our seedlings in the future as well. Hopefully I can find a minute to get a few pictures up on facebook soon.

Crito said:

@greatlakehops I hope your trails go well on your new hop breeding program. What flavor profile is the Willow Creek hop plant? I hope they will go on sale to us home brewers this spring. Thanks again for your hard work!

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Actually Willow Creek is one of the varieties that we have very little information on. We will be growing it out in trials this year, and hopefully will have enough cones to submit to the brewery trial program. We have a few new varieties that we have been working on in house that have had a great response from some major craft breweries in Michigan.

brewerelated said:

Would you guys sell rhizomes from certified male plants? This would help a lot as then we would have a known male for breeding with known female plants.

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I'll have to check with my supervisor. It will probably happen at some point, but more than likely not for a year or so. Eventually we will have bred our own unique males, and will probably have less use for their USDA parents. At that time they will likely become available for sale.

The breeding programs around the world are quite interesting. A majority of them are private, so no information is known about the heritage of newer varieties on the market; unless they are under a plant protection in which case they are required to disclose the parent information.

One thing we know for certain is that it will take some time to get a few varieties that have commercial potential and improve over their ancestors. No point in bringing a Cascade cross to market if its only slightly better and it doesn't grow nearly as well.

Did that little girl I sent up a few years ago ever become anything? We called her 'Lé Hood'. I know the male didn't make it but was curious about her. Hop On~

Hello B-Hoppy,

Tell us more of this Le Hood hops. Was it grown from seed? What is its origins? Would you be willing to sell a Le Hood rhizome?

B-Hoppy said:

Did that little girl I sent up a few years ago ever become anything? We called her 'Lé Hood'. I know the male didn't make it but was curious about her. Hop On~

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She came up in my compost pile while I was living in Lé Hood back in the mid-90's. At that point, my hops were grown at a different location from where I lived and I saw the plant come up in my compost pile and decided to keep it around. She never really was a big producer but in good years I'd get a half pound and make up an IPA. Cone structure was similar to the German varieties I'd grown Tett/Hers but the cones weren't as big. Alpha never looked to be more than maybe 5-6 in a good year. Kinda spicy aroma rub but I got a 'heavy/thick peach syrup' aroma in the beer. Others described it as 'grapefruit'.
When I found out that GLH was doing some breeding I sent some cuttings to Lynn and he told me that she was "a dirty little girl" and tried to clean her up. Never heard back as to what happened after the 'disinfection' and I ended up ripping them out last year. Just taking up space and creating the potential to spread the virus further so she's gone!

Just to give you all an idea of some of the work I am doing....these are a small subset of the seed I was able to recover from my purchase. I am attempting to germinate them in culture currently. Provided these are viable, I will continue to follow them over the next several months and try to determine their value to others. A long process this will be, but breeding always is.

There are four different media types I am experimenting with, and unfortunately the lab assistant didn't properly manage all of them, so they did not fully solidify (which is why some of the seeds appear to be floating mid-gel).

The greatest success here so far, is that the culture is still sterile, which means that if any seeds do germinate, there will not be any competition for nutrients. Now I just want one to germinate....

brewerelated said:

I want to start crossbreeding hops as well, but I have been unable to get access to any male plants. I don't want to buy seeds off of eBay because I can't trust their information about the lineage of those seeds. When I buy seeds I want to at least know which mother plant they came from even if the father can't be determined. I am thinking about buying whole leaf hops from hopsdirect or hop union just to get some seeds from a known mother plant. However, I don't know if those seeds will even grow.

Since I am having trouble getting male plants could you give tips on the process for trying to get pollen from female plants. I saw you mention colloidal silver.

Also, I read that you tried stressing multiple plants, but most of the time the pollen weren't viable. I also read in other forum post that stressed females usually don't put out viable pollen. Do you have any insight as to how to get female plants to put out viable pollen and produce viable seed? For example is self fertilization possible? Are some varieties more likely to put out viable pollen than others? Any help you can give would be greatly appreciated.

Click to expand...

Why bother about the lineage of the seeds found in order to have a male plant ? All you need is at least 1 male plant to start your own experiment, this is the reason why I originally choose to buy seeds from E-Bay... plant qualities will come later. Starting with wild hop will bring new genes, but from a brewing point of view, the wild males can be as crappy as those seeds found on E-Bay.

If lineage is important for you, you can cross that unknown male with a known cultivar...then get seeds, sprout them and get new males, select the best one and use that first generation to breed back with the same mother plant...that way, you will have a second generation of males that will be close to the mother plant.


Little link for breeders: Plant breeding

DarkCoder said:

Why bother about the lineage of the seeds found in order to have a male plant ? All you need is at least 1 male plant to start your own experiment, this is the reason why I originally choose to buy seeds from E-Bay... plant qualities will come later. Starting with wild hop will bring new genes, but from a brewing point of view, the wild males can be as crappy as those seeds found on E-Bay.

If lineage is important for you, you can cross that unknown male with a known cultivar...then get seeds, sprout them and get new males, select the best one and use that first generation to breed back with the same mother plant...that way, you will have a second generation of males that will be close to the mother plant.


Little link for breeders: Plant breeding

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DarkCoder, do you currently have any seeds that germinated or are growing from the seed lots you purchased?

PapaBearJay said:

DarkCoder, do you currently have any seeds that germinated or are growing from the seed lots you purchased?

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Yes, but I am only on my first year of the experiment. I bought seeds from France (only 6 seeds - no sprouting at all, more than 1 month of cold stratification), UK (I received something like 160 seed, put around 50 for cold stratification during 1 month...got only 4 that sprouted...but seems like those plants are fighting to stay alive...slow grow) and seeds from the US (put 10 seeds for cold stratification during 1 month, got 3 that sprouted, those plants are growing ok and seems healthy). All those 3 sources of seeds are from unknown lineage of hops.

I recently bought some whole leaf Cascade, found a lot of seeds in it. I have put them in the fridge last week for cold stratification and I already have 3 seeds that sprouted.

You are right in that its not critical for one to know the lineage. You definitely can just breed hops without having a known male plant.

The reason I want to know is so that I can try my best to document the process as well possible and to have as much information as possible. I personally like to study the correlation between the inputs and the outputs. Knowing the lineage of the father gives you an idea of what could be possible.

Knowing the male could give you a better chance of selecting for a particular characteristic such as adaptability to a particular region. I understand that in genetics you can't control everything. I am just trying to stack the odds in my favor as much as possible.

My personal goal is to create a variety that is well suited to the Southwest part of the United States. I could start with a known female from the Southwest like Neo1 or Amalia and then crossbreed them with an unknown males, but It would be nice to know at least the geographic origin of the male.

I think I am gonna buy some whole leaf hops and try to grow seeds from there. Now its a matter of trying to find a vendor that has a higher tendency of selling whole hops with seeds.

DarkCoder said:

Why bother about the lineage

Click to expand...

B-Hoppy said:

Did that little girl I sent up a few years ago ever become anything? We called her 'Lé Hood'. I know the male didn't make it but was curious about her. Hop On~

Click to expand...

Yes sir shes still growing here. It didn't grow very well when compared to many other varieties right next to it.

The good news is that we have successfully crossed LeHood with some of the male plants we have on site and they have produced viable seeds. The seedlings actually just got up sized this week and are being grown out for further trials.

Give Lynn a call about it one of these days. I'm sure he'll give you a heads up with whats going on.

In addition we have successful crosses from CRV. I'm personally interested to see if the crosses send out rhizomes like the RedVine. That thing is a beast!

brewerelated said:

... My personal goal is to create a variety that is well suited to the Southwest part of the United States. I could start with a known female from the Southwest like Neo1 or Amalia and then crossbreed them with an unknown males, but It would be nice to know at least the geographic origin of the male. ...

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Amalia and Neo1 are a selection of Neomexicanus...don't look any further for your wild material. Just pray that the seeds I sent you will give you some male seedling.

Thanks for sending the seeds. I am definitely on the path now to creating a hybrid Neomexicana x HopUnion Cascade Open Pollinated which I greatly prefer over Neomexicana x Humulus eBayus.

DarkCoder said:

Amalia and Neo1 are a selection of Neomexicanus...don't look any further for your wild material. Just pray that the seeds I sent you will give you some male seedling.

Click to expand...

DarkCoder said:

Yes, but I am only on my first year of the experiment. I bought seeds from France (only 6 seeds - no sprouting at all, more than 1 month of cold stratification), UK (I received something like 160 seed, put around 50 for cold stratification during 1 month...got only 4 that sprouted...but seems like those plants are fighting to stay alive...slow grow) and seeds from the US (put 10 seeds for cold stratification during 1 month, got 3 that sprouted, those plants are growing ok and seems healthy). All those 3 sources of seeds are from unknown lineage of hops.

I recently bought some whole leaf Cascade, found a lot of seeds in it. I have put them in the fridge last week for cold stratification and I already have 3 seeds that sprouted.

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Pictures, past or present?

PapaBearJay said:

Pictures, past or present?

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If you are talking about the pictures on my blog, they have been taken on the same day as the posting.

That's unfortunate, I would have loved to have one of those plants. Peach syrup aroma would be interesting.

B-Hoppy said:

She came up in my compost pile while I was living in Lé Hood back in the mid-90's. At that point, my hops were grown at a different location from where I lived and I saw the plant come up in my compost pile and decided to keep it around. She never really was a big producer but in good years I'd get a half pound and make up an IPA. Cone structure was similar to the German varieties I'd grown Tett/Hers but the cones weren't as big. Alpha never looked to be more than maybe 5-6 in a good year. Kinda spicy aroma rub but I got a 'heavy/thick peach syrup' aroma in the beer. Others described it as 'grapefruit'.
When I found out that GLH was doing some breeding I sent some cuttings to Lynn and he told me that she was "a dirty little girl" and tried to clean her up. Never heard back as to what happened after the 'disinfection' and I ended up ripping them out last year. Just taking up space and creating the potential to spread the virus further so she's gone!

Click to expand...

DarkCoder said:

If you are talking about the pictures on my blog, they have been taken on the same day as the posting.

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Where is your blog?

Edit: Nevermind, I found them.

Quick update: The 2014 seedlings are doing very well.

The amazing thing - though not entirely unexpected - is how varied the plants are. Even in the same cross: Some are tall, others short. Some light green, others dark. Some have leaves with round teeth, others are sharp.

Well, I just checked on my cultures, and it seems as though not all were sterile. (B@stards!)

I'll get you next time! (Also, still no germination....)

@Papabearjay,
Perhaps you already mentioned this, but did you stratify the seeds? The best germination rates that I have found came after a long (3-4month) cold stratification. Without it, I had to remove the seed coats to get any results.

nagmay said:

@Papabearjay,
Perhaps you already mentioned this, but did you stratify the seeds? The best germination rates that I have found came after a long (3-4month) cold stratification. Without it, I had to remove the seed coats to get any results.

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Nagmay,

The media I am using actually contains gibberellic acid in it, which is a plant hormone involved in germination and cell elongation. Most temperate species that require cold stratification can have that process circumvented or the amount of time reduced by such treatments (soaking seed, etc.). The media on which that seeds were plated actually contained gibberellic acid, and there are possible signs of life present...

That said, in a previous experiment with media containing cytokinins, I am stratifying seeds (~2 weeks currently).

I also placed a number of seeds in moist soil and placed them in a separate cooler for stratification. (This being the generally accepted procedured.)

I also soaked seeds for a number of weeks at different gibberellic acid (GA) concentrations and recently placed them in our misthouse for germination.

Just trying to monitor and develop a number of different methods because I feel there are improvements that can be made to decrease the time involved. (I'm impatient when it comes to some things.)

Excellent - please keep us updated. Your findings on the best germination route would be really helpful in the coming years.

I'm currently trying various internet sources for seeds. I have some stratifying now, will post back about success rates and sources.

alane1 said:

I'm currently trying various internet sources for seeds. I have some stratifying now, will post back about success rates and sources.

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How many seeds have you collected and how many sources have you attempted to verify?


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

PapaBearJay said:

How many seeds have you collected and how many sources have you attempted to verify?


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

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I have 100 seeds so far, waiting for 200 more. I ordered 100 each from 3 different websites.

Due to the difficulties I've been having in promoting germination I decided to excise some embryos and place directly onto media. Now, provided at each interval I maintained sterile technique (I do try!), I should be able to see growth (if the plant embryo is viable.....). Here's hoping!

PapaBearJay said:

Due to the difficulties I've been having in promoting germination I decided to excise some embryos and place directly onto media. Now, provided at each interval I maintained sterile technique (I do try!), I should be able to see growth (if the plant embryo is viable.....). Here's hoping!

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The least that we can say is that you REALLY WANT those little plants !

I still have some of those open pollination Cascade seeds and I can give you the name of the eBay US seller from which I bought viable seeds (unknown origin).

DarkCoder said:

The least that we can say is that you REALLY WANT those little plants !

I still have some of those open pollination Cascade seeds and I can give you the name of the eBay US seller from which I bought viable seeds (unknown origin).

Click to expand...

In fact I do. I only need one male, the rest I can come up with as I go along. Feel free to PM any information you're happy to pass along unless others require the same information. Actually, by the end of day, I'll begin working on a new thread. Stay tuned.