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.
But that wouldn’t answer the OP’s questions about their existing population.
Also…
Have you ever worked with EMS? It’s the last resort of the desperate. You burn money and time searching for a needle in a haystack.
It’s useful for creating variations for narrowly targeted objectives with easy phenotyping. Say a color variation in a flower or a herbicide resistance in grain.
Ploidy also matters a ton for if the mutations will be able express at all. Saffron for example is a sterile triploid. J. Artichoke is a hexaploid- double the number chromosomal copies.
Side note: For Saffron the outlook for breeding looks to be very good. They have identified the parent species Crocus cartwrightianus. It’s also in a 2n diploid state. Converting the 2n to a 4n and then crossing to make new 3n cultivars is theoretically possible.