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Cultivating the Commons

WI-OSC Purple Carrot OG


Daucus carota.  

According to our cohorts Experimental Farm Network, 

"Our friend Dr. Claire Luby — plant breeder, organizer, and Executive Director of the Open Source Seed Initiative (OSSI) — recently completed her PhD at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Her thesis assessed genetic variability and "freedom to operate" among U.S. carrot cultivars. In short, Claire attempted to find out whether or not there are enough carrot cultivars without intellectual property restrictions attached to them to enable open-source plant breeders to develop the resilient, delicious, nutritious carrots of the future. As part of her studies, in collaboration with UW-Madison's Dr. Irwin Goldman, one of the founders of OSSI, Claire developed eight intellectual-property-free populations of carrot germplasm and released them as OSSI-pledged varieties. Our collaborators Clint Freund and Kass McKinnon were given some of Claire's 'WI-OSC Purple' (which stands for "Wisconsin Open Source Composite") and produced these seeds for us, selecting only for flavor and more purple skin.

Claire's OSSI entry for this population states the following:

"The goal of breeding the Wisconsin Open Source Composite populations was to take commercially available cultivars that had freedom to operate for breeding and create diverse carrot populations based on market class and root color. These composite populations are meant to represent some of the diversity present in commercially available carrot germplasm that is available to use in breeding. The WI-OSC Purple population has purple exterior color (anthocyanin accumulation) with a variation of purple, orange, and white interiors. Roots are generally quite large in diameter with a significant taper. Tops are very vigorous. Parental material included: Cosmic Purple , Deep Purple, Dragon, Purple Haze, and Purple Sun. The roots in this population most clearly resemble the Cosmic Purple and Dragon varieties. This population has been developed for two generations under organic growing conditions."

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