I have been planting and harvesting sun root for a few years but I’ve never been able to harvest the actual seeds of the plants, regardless of having the flowers atracting insects.
Has anyone been able to harvest the seeds? If so, how and when? My intention is to try to grow from seed and see if some variation occurs.
My sun roots develop the usual yellow brownish tubers but occasionally I find some which are reddish or even deep purple; the pulp remains white or lightly yellow but the flavour profile changes drastically, with the purple ones having a very pronounced hazel nut hint.
The tubers enable cloning the same plant, one year after the other; there is no new genetic variation being introduced.
Even with only plants of the same variety crosspolinating, there is room for selection over generations. If I was able to carry true seeds from one year to the next, I could test for new individuals and crosspolinate those which developed greater numbers of uncommon tubers to select towards plants with a higher yield of such tubers.
If there’s no variation, how are you getting it already? The plant has variants in its genes, you can accomplish the same thing with the tubers. It’s why the tubers also have the variations you’re already seeing.
What part of this are you still missing here?
I’ve kept and planted only purple tubers and the plants do not return a higher yield of such tubers. It may return a few purple ones, it may grow only standard tubers.
I’ve even considered it a response of the plant towards soil conditions, sun exposure or amount of watering and it makes no difference.
There is no way, in my limited knowledge, to increase the frequency of such tubers, unless I was able to selectively breed towards such result like what I’ve done with hot peppers.