Except the Wye College program no longer exists...I believe it **** down in 2009....and the breeder and all its germplasm went into private industry. I don't know all the specifics, but you probably won't find either outside of the UK, probably for a number of reasons.
I would like to think that hellfire and brimstone wouldn't be leashed upon anyone for growing F1s, but there are probably a lot of reasons why they might anyways.
Also, the likelihood of getting what you want with 5 seed from Summit hops is...limited. It's all a numbers game, you know that.
Just saying...
I don't even think I can get my hands on Summit whole leaf hops, though I haven't really specifically looked for them yet (I learned about them after ordering a whole bunch of hops, which I have not yet gone through). Just looked at my supplier, damn, seems like he only has 2 whole leaf hops now... he had like 30 when I last ordered from him. Sure enough, Summit's only available as pellets. A pity, it'd have been nice to have dwarf genetics from a completely separate breeding line from the UK's. Having some SummitF1(male)xBoadicea crosses to work with would have been appreciated. After all, on most metrics, Summit beats First Gold.
Summit is both said to be a dwarf and a semi-dwarf, though, what does that mean? It's homozygous for the dwarf allele, but just overly vigorous and tall anyways? Or it's heterozygous for the dwarf allele, and just exeptionnaly short for a non-dwarf? Does having the dwarf allele once make any difference than not having it at all (is dwarfism recessive, partially recessive, or codominant?)?
The British dwarves, I know I can get rhizomes for. Since I'm not in the US, I'm allowed to import. There's just extra costs and paperwork involved. But their whole leaf hops, so far, appear to be full of seeds. Not just a handful per oz like I got from the American whole leaf hops, but, like, over a hundred per oz. They appear to not go as nuts over having no seeds in the UK as they do in the Americas, unless it was just that one batch that was out of the norm. Good germination from those so far, even got some of the non-stratified seeds that I had boiled that are starting to germinate (figured I might as well use them to fill the tray, though now that I see my last supplier doesn't offer whole leaf anymore I'll be more careful about not wasting the seeds I have!).
A pity for Wye. You can't "make" a public cultivar private, though, right? The breeders' following work might be private, but First Gold and Boadicea will remain public?
As you said, it's a numbers' game. My criteria aren't very complex: a hop clone that will yield the most commercializable quality cones on 6' treillis without any treatments at my latitudes. I'm not looking for a specific aroma, I'm not looking for specific acid contents, or for specific oil contents, just something hardy and productive enough that yields a cone with value for *something*, whatever that be. But instead of doing 10000s of F1s, I'll just keep doing dozens to hundreds of F1s, F2, F3s, F4s, F5s, etc., as long as it takes, until I find something worthwhile. Might get an interesting F2, might only find something noteworthy in the F7 batches. That's just the luck of the dice. In the meanwhile, I'm having fun, I'm spared from the astronomical costs of a typical hop yard with high trellis and a dedicated greenhouse, and I'll have novel hops for my brews.
And as long as I'm not growing acres and acres and acres of it, I'm fairly sure I can find local clients for what those plants will yield me.