Almost all commercial varieties are F1 hybrids and perhaps the most insidious problems with them for gardeners are the few seeds in a packet and the high prices charged even for these.

The intrinsic technology behind an F1 hybrid is simple and clever (see Advantages). BUT each F1 hybrid is produced only from their inbred parental lines; these cannot be reconstituted from the F1 hybrid and they need never leave company premises. Thus, ownership of these gives companies absolute ownership of the F1 hybrids – hence they can charge high (monopolistic) prices.

And if gardeners save the seed of an F1 hybrid, the yield of the offspring is nowhere near as good as the original, especially if the plant breeder has left one or two recessive deleterious genes (by chance?). This forces gardeners to buy new stock every season. Brilliant sales technique but somehow seems sneaky!

A nifty technology involving various forms of male sterility can allow F1 hybrids to be created without having to ensure physically that pollen from one inbred parent always pollinates the other inbred parent – by-the-by, making their production very cheap. But if this method is used, it not only stops gardeners getting seed from the F1 hybrids (another sneaky trick?) but also other plant breeding companies, preventing access to any unique genes!

In maize, the first commercial source of sterility was inadvertently linked with susceptibility to Southern corn leaf blight. Almost everybody used this one source and most hybrid varieties succumbed to the disease in the 1970s. The economic losses from this epidemic were catastrophic, estimated then to total about 1 billion dollars. The food lost was many times greater than even in the infamous potato famine in Ireland in the 1840s (Bruns, 2017)!

This danger is still being risked. Plant breeders want to make the maximum use of a successful resistance gene. And the powdery mildew resistance of Santero F1 onions based on a gene found in Allium roylei, a wild species from the Himalayas, is being used in varieties of onions sold worldwide by at least two international companies, Hazera and Bejo/De Groot en Slot. The latter company has also introduced exactly the same gene into a shallot variety, Innovator.

The single dominant genes such as Ph 1 and 2 similarly are being used to provide late blight resistance in tomatoes. And once the resistance gene(s) are present in a parental line, all that is needed is to breed a series of F1 hybrids with perhaps yellow instead of red fruit or small cherry tomatoes instead of beefsteak ones is cross them with an already-created relevant parental line.

There are now several series of resistant lines marketed by separate seed companies, for example, the Crimson Crush, Crimson Cherry, Crimson Plum, Crimson Blush series. They may look very different to us but, to the blight disease, all are the same ‘under the skin’ and equally susceptible to a resistance-breaking strain.

And this also shows how, although the development of hybrids has been associated with a huge proliferation of varieties, the diversity of variety names is often not matched by an equivalent increase in genetic diversity – just one useful inbred line may be matched with a series of others to create a range of varieties. So, despite the superficial diversity of F1 hybrids, the genetic diversity is decreased – a distinct lack of care for the future.

And there is another big problem which isn’t often highlighted: the UK ornamental horticulture industry alone is worth more than twenty-four billion pounds to our economy and provides over 500,000 jobs or one in every sixty jobs (Oxford Economics, 2018). All this money sloshing around has resulted in companies all wanting to have their unique range of varieties to sell. But gardeners still have space for only one of each crop, creating the dilemma – which to choose?

Of course, the strong ownership conferred by F1 hybrids has advantages; there is little doubt it has allowed seed companies to invest massively. But plant breeding companies shouldn’t have stronger ownership than that allowed by law!

Gardeners (and growers!), don’t be fooled. It is probably the absolute ownership provided by F1 hybrids that explains why they comprise most modern varieties!

Nonetheless, gardeners do need new varieties: tastes change, new methods of growing develop, e.g., raised beds and no-dig, and we need new varieties for our changing climate. Also let’s not forget useful traits keep getting discovered – such as new resistances – and we need to participate in these benefits.