Growing hops from seed

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Anyone have experience harvesting hop pollen and if it is possible to store it long term?

My male plant is completely covered with flowers, although none of my female plants have burrs yet. Don't want to miss the window for cross pollination.
 
Just cut the sidearms off, bag them for transport and dump the contents out on a big sheet of freezer paper or something like that. You can gently continue tapping them until you don't see any more pollen shedding and roll the paper into a funnel then collect the pollen in some sort of container with the lid loosely on in the fridge. You can keep the sidearms in the fridge also but keep them very loosely covered to allow any moisture to escape and not accumulate. Every day, take them out and try to collect any new pollen that may have become exposed as the flowers open up.
 
Going well. The 8 contenders from the original crosses are now mature and producing a ton of cones. All taste good, but some of the flavors are really unique. Brewing IPAs about every other weekend to compare and contrast.

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We are also working with 9 new crosses (out of 500 seedlings) - with heavy neo genes. Though, none of them have been tested for alpha/beta.

Now, we just need to think about where to go next with this project...

Well, the next step would probably be multi-site trials and distribution. ;)
 
Well after 3 months in the bottom of my out door Refrigerator I put these trays out to catch some spring sun!
And after a nice Spring shower look what is starting to emerge!!
First year seedlings coming up fingers crossed there are some winners some where in here.
Praying for both good male and female stock!
 

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Anyone have experience harvesting hop pollen and if it is possible to store it long term?

My male plant is completely covered with flowers, although none of my female plants have burrs yet. Don't want to miss the window for cross pollination.

Obviously an old post but curious if anybody has an answer to this. I know pollen can be stored generally from plants but I'm not sure what the long term viability of pollen might be and under what conditions. Surely we have some advanced gardeners with better ideas.
 
Obviously an old post but curious if anybody has an answer to this. I know pollen can be stored generally from plants but I'm not sure what the long term viability of pollen might be and under what conditions. Surely we have some advanced gardeners with better ideas.

From memory it loses about 50% viability after a year in the freezer, assuming dried and frozen correctly. There's a paper somewhere that talks about this.

I have harvested pollen last year, but I have not attempted to use it yet. Did not keep plants growing enough indoors this winter to end up with burrs.
 
Near perfect conservation can also be done with liquid nitrogen, but that's a bit out of reach for the average layman. 50% over a year in a common freezer is plenty good enough for dealing with flowering asynchrony.
 
A Neomexicanus female born and raised in my home in 2019.
The seed comes directly from Arizona.

"Survivor" of the mildew and powdery mildew that burned the majority of Neomexicanus this year (from France)
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One of the seedlings from 2019 turned out being a pretty good producer with an aroma similar to Cascade but the citrus portion leans more more towards a deep lime . Issues last year and I ended up picking a little earlier than it should have and didn't dry it down enough before it got packaged. The resulting beer didn't taste off or anything, but it just didn't 'pop'? Waited a little longer to pick this year and is dried down to where it should be so as soon as it cools down this will be the first to be used.

Don't know if the pics came out but the top one is the pole down and the second and last ones have some of the leaves removed in order to get a better idea of how many cones were on this gal. Last one shows the goods. Looks and feels really greasy!!
 

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the small stakes were used to identify the location of each seed before it germinated. I let them, they will decompose
Looking at the other photos I can see they aren't as menacing as they first looked. More like toothpicks than little stakes.
 
Sylvain, it was a pleasure meeting you last week. When I posted pictures a friend in my hometown mentioned that she has run across wild hops in the Gila Forest near our house. When we go home in September I will find out where she has seen them and I'll try to collect either seeds or a rhyzome.
 
Bad year for the seedlings here in Ohio this year. Out of probably over 1,000 seedlings I only have a few dozen that survived. Most of them were wiped out by Downy as I inoculated them multiple times this spring - much harder than in the past. The survivors are just now beginning to reveal their genders and so far it's all been girls.

The first and last pics show the potential variability in vigor of these crosses. The first one is from a cross with Cascade as a mother and a male I've named 'Jackie Wilson' (long story) and the last pic is the result of Brewers Gold being crossed with Rex (the Golden Boy- my first male) in the middle picture. You can see the Cascade seedling is throwing some serious sidearms and seems like a potentially big producer whereas the Brewers Gold seedling is only putting out some little dinky sidearms that will only give up a few cones on each at best. Next step is to continue to monitor them and do a rub/sniff on the cones once they form and have matured. If they smell good, I move them to a more stable area once they go dormant this fall and hope they continue to perform well the following season. I don't have the resources to handle too many from year to year like the big breeders so at the end of next year, I generally brew with them to see if I'll keep them around (as long as they're good producers). It seems to have worked well up to this point but I've only been serious about it since about 2010 so we can't expect too much.
 

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The male in the picture just popped up from seed around 2010. Jackie Wilson is a male derived from a cross using Zeus as the mother a few years ago. 'Tatoo' is a dwarf derived from a cross with Chinook as the mother in 2016 or so? I do have a USDA male M19058 that I haven't used yet.

Are the hops in the two pictures you posted seedlings from this season?
 
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