Elisabeth Rogue!

[jayb]

Last year I grew a small line of Elisabeth mange tout peas, they have become a firm favourite here. I was surprised to see one had purple maroon coloured flowers. I'm fairly sure it was from seed sown and not a stray overlooked pea seed as the area had not been used for peas before and all the plants had been module grown and started indoors (though anything is possible). I was kindly given Elisabeth pea by Galina a few years ago and these were the last of the original seed. The off-type pea vine produced, I thought at the time, a lovely tasty Mange tout type pods. These were very similar tasting to Elisabeth, except the flower colour was so different. I did wonder if it were a stray seed or if there were any possibility that this one vine had reverted to it's original type -Weggiser.

Edit to add link to Elisabeth Pea http://www.growingfoodsavingseeds.co...elisabeth-peas

[jayb]

I can't find a picture of the rogue pods growing. These are them dried, the pods do look to have a fibre layer.

[Galina]

Here is a picture of Weggiser on the left and the rogue purple flowered off-type Elisabeth on the right. Weggiser is a bit shinier looking and the off-type Elisabeth is a tiny bit larger in the pod. It was a mangetout, even the larger pods were not wooddy. However I also have a couple of plants that look just the same and the pods are wooddy. Will follow up both types again, certainly the mangetout type was delightfully sweet with big pods.

[jayb]

They do look different, I wish I'd taken more pictures last year. As there are two types of pods it would suggest a chance cross?
Flavour wise the mangetout sounds great

[jayb]

A couple more photos, Elisabeth and Elisabeth rogue pods and seeds as a comparison.

[Galina]

My batch of Elisabeth Rogue or off-type Elisabeth as I have mostly called it and which was grown from your seeds from last year, has the identical seed colour to yours last year (pictured above). The pods are of both types, like the mangetout on the left and the fibrous on the right. It seems that something was segregating out for mangetout or shelling pod. I had marked up some pods (looking like yours on the right) as mangetout, because they tasted fiber-less, but when I looked at the pods as I was shelling them, they looked fibrous after all. I marked them as 'mangetout, but re-check because dried pods look fibrous'. Maybe they are slow to develop fiber??? Other plants had pods that were definitely fibrous right from the start and looked like the one on the right. It is interesting that our seeds are identical looking - not an F2 generation in my garden this year then??? F3? All seeds harvested this year look like your seeds from last year, just the pods differed in my batch of these.

One obvious further test is to see whether the mangetout podded type that was fiber-less in the dried pod, comes true in future generations as mangetout. If it turns out to produce mixed pod types as a characteristic (like I had this year), rather than mangetout pods, it would be of lesser interest for the kitchen garden. Although, I suspect, of interest for genetic reasons.

The matching test would be to grow a batch of the 'definitely woody podded' type and check that no mangetouts are in that batch.

[Galina]

7 photographs showing Weggiser fresh seed and old seed, Winterkefe old and relatively fresh seeds, rogue Elisabeth mangetout pods, rogue Elisabeth inflated pod (the type that I thought was mangetout, but looks to be fibrous after all) This type looks identical to the rogue Elisabeth woody pods.and a picture of my rogue Elisabeth seeds.

I did this collage to compare Weggiser to Rogue Elisabeth and I also wanted to make absolutely sure that Rogue Elisabeth mangetout is not a stray Winterkefe that had somehow found its way onto the Rogue Elisabeth support! Winterkefe is a close match in pod size, but the pods get a whitish sheen as they get older which Rogue Elisabeth mangetout did not get. Looking at old and newer seeds of Winterkefe, there are no seeds with purple speckling at all. Although the seed colour at first glance is very similar, the fact that there are NO purple speckles on any of the Winterkefe seeds must mean that they are not the same, because Rogue Elisabeth has purple speckles. There has been no accidental Winterkefe growing amongst the Rogue Elisabeth. All Rogue Elisabeth mangetouts must have grown from your seeds.

Rogue Elisabeth seeds have purple speckling, but the seed is not the same as Weggiser either (so no throw-back to Weggiser if Elisabeth is indeed a mutation of Weggiser). . The pods are slightly different (see pictures posted earlier) and Weggiser seeds are much smaller. Older Weggiser seeds darken to a similar brown of Rogue Elisabeth, but fresh Weggiser seeds look much greener with the typical purple speckles. Rogue Elisabeth seeds are bigger and much browner than Weggiser seeds, although both share purple speckling.

[Galina]

The last 3 photos

[Galina]

I cannot upload the last photo - Rogue Elisabeth with shelling pod. No matter, it looks just like yours from last year, Jayb. So it is 6 photos rather than 7.

[Silverleaf]

I had marked up some pods (looking like yours on the right) as mangetout, because they tasted fiber-less, but when I looked at the pods as I was shelling them, they looked fibrous after all. I marked them as 'mangetout, but re-check because dried pods look fibrous'. Maybe they are slow to develop fiber???

Maybe they have only one of the two genes needed for fully edible pods? That combination gives pods that are only fibre-free when young.

One obvious further test is to see whether the mangetout podded type that was fiber-less in the dried pod, comes true in future generations as mangetout. If it turns out to produce mixed pod types as a characteristic (like I had this year), rather than mangetout pods, it would be of lesser interest for the kitchen garden. Although, I suspect, of interest for genetic reasons.

The two genes responsible for lack of pod fibre are p and v. These alleles are both recessive, so in order to produce mangetout pods a pea needs to be pp vv.

An ordinary shelling type has to have at least one each of P and V, for normal pod fibre. (We write this as P_ V_, meaning we don't know or care what the second allele of each pair is, the dominant trait will be the one expressed - in this case fibre).

Unless there's a spontaneous mutation (JIC says p reverts to P at a rate of 0.05-0.2%, so highly unlikely but possible) or a cross, a pp vv plant can't ever make a shelling pod because it doesn't have any copies of P or V.

A recessive trait should always breed true unless there's something weird going on.

[Galina]

That is good to know. Will see what the true mangetout type does next year, then it needs a name. Maybe not a 'Beth' name, because there are no pink flowers.

Also a proper evaluation and selection. At the moment I can only think of looking at plant height, pod number and number of seeds in any pod, plant health obviously, uniformity? Any other pointers how to select for a first seed batch of the new variety? What steps should we take towards developing this as a variety in its own right?

[jayb]

Great info thanks Galina and Silverleaf, I'm going to sit down with a cuppa later on and go through this again.

[Galina]

I wanted to add that I am growing Rogue Elisabeth Mangetout this year (2015) and it does exactly that, no surprises just lovely, sweet, green mangetouts and purple flowers. Didn't have space to grow the fibrous type.

[Galina]

just an aside. the link from Elisabeth to Rogue Elisabeth doesn't seem to be working.

[Admin]

I've put in a new link, it should be working now.

[jayb]

I haven't had a chance to grow any this year. At least you are getting mangetout from mangetout, I still haven't quite got the grasp of what they are up to though!
Bonus, they are a nice one

[Galina]

Long time no update. A small sowing of off-type Elisabeth last year. Mangetout, but some produced wider pods and others narrower pods. The wider podded ones produced a small quantity of beige seeds, something which is never seen in Elisabeth. I think we have now seen enough differences to be pretty sure that 'Rogue', 'Off-type' or 'Odd' Elisabeth (all terms we have used interchangeably for the same pea, sorry for any confusion), must have been a cross. Either intentional with lost label, or one of those very rare accidental ones. Presumably with a beige seeded shelling pea. Have sown again all that I had labelled 'Off Eli mangetout' and a separate sowing of the 'wide podded off-Eli mangetouts' with the differences in seed colour. Will see what happens. This is an entirely serendipitous and unplanned cross, but also great fun to follow up..

[Galina]

Seem to have ended up with one plant of the originally white seeded and two plants of the wide podded type, All now well out of their bottles and about 2ft tall. I am growing so many different types of pea that most batches are fairly small.

[jayb]

Yes it is. I've a real soft spot for Elisabeth and also the off types, glad you are growing them