Comment by zdragnar
7 hours ago
You should do at least a bit of research before you basically accuse someone of being a liar and corporate shill for no more reason than it fits your generic worldview.
F1 and F2 are commonly accepted terms for first generation and second generation seeds from hybrid plants. Because these hybrids are created from two stable lines, they are themselves unstable and will produce, at best, seeds of varying quality and at worst entirely sterile plants.
https://www.parkseed.com/blogs/park-seed-blog/understanding-...
https://www.reddit.com/r/botany/comments/wq3heg/question_why...
https://www.google.com/search?q=difference+between+first+and...
If you're going to pay more for a hybrid seed, it should be only for a first generation, otherwise you don't know what you're going to get. For some crops, like tomatos, that's survivable. For others like corn, that could easily be devastating. It's like playing russian roulette the slow and expensive way.
Note that OP didn't say the seed banks themselves should be illegal, but when you can't identify by visual inspection, it's very high risk for fraud if they're selling what they claim are premium products but are really F2 seeds.
You are right, my tone was too dismissive. The questions were not rhetorical, I was actually trying to understand the argument because it didn’t make sense from the basic knowledge I had. I appreciate this info, that’s what I wanted.
If you don’t want to deal with F2 plants, the alternative is “landrace”, which are collected seeds specific usually to a microbiome. They germinate with the most appropriate genes already activated (epigenetics) in the germ line. Instead of getting seeds from some company in Pennsylvania or Oregon you get them from grandpa or the guy at the other end of the valley, where the soil and weather patterns are identical. And you keep it that way.
The F1 person might also want to buy your seeds because he has access to another landrace variety from far away and wants to cross them.