Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. Heirloom vegetable varieties are prized for a number of reasons. Imagine, growing the same pole beans or butter beans that your great grandfather grew. Even if you don’t have seeds from an ancestor, you can enjoy the boost in flavor that many heirlooms have over modern hybrid varieties. But there is a place for new hybrid varieties, too. When exotic diseases make their way across oceans and our entire supply of wheat, or corn or another valued commodity is threatened, plant breeders work frantically to come up with a resistant variety. That “in-breed” resistance can only be duplicated by growing a hybrid population. To do that these plant breeders go back to the stock-piled genetic banks of heirloom varieties that are evaluated to find at least one plant with resistance. Then by crossing and backcrossing, a new resistant hybrid with required traits can be developed.
The Advantages of Hybrid Crops
