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.
EMS is ethyl-methanesulfonate. It’s a compound used to cause random point mutations in organisms. Basically the idea is to treat a whole bunch of plants with the compound and try to cause mutations that might exhibit a trait of interest, like disease resistance or increase crop yield.
What you’d do in this case is take a tuber and dunk the meristematic tissue (i.e the little eyes on the tuber) in a solution of EMS to induce mutation and then grow all the little eyelets on some sort of growth media, usually MS agar or something similar. EMS and the growth media can be ordered online. In the lab you’d typically have access to things like a laminar flow and autoclave, but you can use a plastic box and pressure cooker instead. It’s a bit dodgy, and you might get some plate contamination, but if you’re careful it shouldn’t be unmanageable.
I’ve had rotten seeds thrown on the compost heap sprout and take root. I risk the things will manage.