What is this?? - Albino maize

I was having a walk and admiring my newly sprouted corn, when I came across this.  I have to say in all my years I have grown corn I have never seen this.  My phone doesn't take the best close ups, but it is the exact shape and texture of a maize sprout... But completely white? Albino maize?  Anybody ever seen this or know anything about it?

I've occasionally seen an albino seedling, but I've never seen one survive to become a full plant. So far I've seen albinism in corn, peas, beets, bok choy, and beans. Partial albinism in basil. I suppose that if I keep growing diversified crops, I'll notice a few more before I die. It's kind of fun to spot them, isn't it Maureen?

This fascinates me!  I didn't know this could happen randomly in plants!  What causes it, does anyone know?  I suppose without chlorophyll, it will die... It's probably just surviving on the energy from the seed.  The only other plant I have seen without chlorophyll are Indian ghost pipes back home in Vermont.

Always something new to learn!

I don't know exactly what causes it, but it's not inherited in these cases. If I recall my inheritable trait charts from college (way back when in the Dark Ages, I'm sure), the incidence is far too low to be indicative of a genetic component. Most likely it's just a glitch in the chromosomes when they are splitting during gamete production. Simply said, just a mistake when the seed DNA was being created.

When I was 20 years old and working in a commercial greenhouse, I saw occasional all white African Violets shoots. They all died. Sometimes a tip on the branch of some ornamental foliage plant would switch over to pure white, and while it lasted for awhile, it eventually died too. They always fascinated me.

Indian Pipes.....yeah! I haven't thought about them for decades. We had them in New Jersey too, in the pine barrens. They are so very cool!

Yes. I've seen it more common in home saved Indian Corn. It is a recessive trait usually. If you happen to see several in a row then it means your strain of corn has been highly inbred and may also suffer from inbreeding depression.

I've only ever seen one albino corn seedling survive and that was one that was half albino and half green straight down the leaf. It apparently had just enough chlorophyll to survive to adulthood but it was a runt and grew slow. Don't think i got a cob from it or enough pollen to study the trait further. I was interested in that plant because it also had a unique purple stripe on it even unlike the other purple corn that i grow.

Considering your posts from the thread "Own or Breed Unique Varieties/Cultivars?" which i recently replied to as also growing purple indian corn i am not surprised you have found albino seedlings in your population. I imagine you will find more this year and/or next year. It is a recessive trait and will show up more and more if your corn is selfed and/or inbred, but 99% of the time they all die.

I actually added in 3 KGS of seed from outside sources this season, because raiding pigs absolutely decimated my last crop and I got very little of my own seed.  Very interesting to note that it may be caused by excessive inbreeding.  While it was cool to see, its not a trait I want showing up in my seed!

By the way, raiding pigs show a definate preference for my colored maize over the white hybrid which is growing on every side of me!

I don't think it can photosynthesis without green colour, so it must still be feeding off its seed energy.  Carol Deppe talks about why this happens in one of her books, but I don't remember which one.

Corn has a recessive trait for albinism.  If both parent plants are heterozygous, meaning Cc by Cc ( think punnet squares from back in middle school science class), there is a 25% chance for albinism. If only one parent plant is heterozygous  and the other is homozygous,  CC by Cc, none of the seedlings would be albino. Thats why its rare, but not impossible. Its not a mutation or freak thing, just basic genetics. Totally recessive plants ( white ones) wont survive ( cc).  

Not corn but some tomatoes get variegated leaves.  However even if they have the genetics for variegation it will not show unless the conditions are right AND they can swap from variegated to nonvariegated so you have to save seeds from a variegated branch to keep the trait.   I have seeds for 4 varieties that are supposed to have variegated leaves. One is an heirloom Potato Leaf Variegated.  Painted Lady is a new OP offering from Wild Boar Farms that is a variegated potato leaf with bi color heart shaped tomatoes, Shimofuri is a new tumbling OP and Sweet Electra is a new dwarf variety with variegated leaves and yellow tomatoes.  A 5th variety I am aware of is another heirloom called Variegated aka Splash of Cream which I don't have but may ask about in the next seed swap just to round out my collection.

I just had this happen to me for the first time. I got some lovely heirloom 8-dent corn seedlings from another Permies member, and a handful came up white!

I did a bit of reading, and this trait has been known for quite some time. The recessive gene responsible for the "ghost seedlings", causes (near) complete absence of chlorophyll in seedlings. As you can see in my picture, there's a tiny dot of green on each of the leaf tips, but not enough to fuel the plant. A week or so after this picture, the plant was starting to brown and die back.

A paper from the mid-20th century noted that this trait had caused agronomists quite a lot of angst to date, as it is essentially impossible to breed out of corn lines. There is no external feature to tell you that the parent plant is carrying the gene--it can only be deduced by genetic analysis (not possible for most seed savers or even smallholder farmers). This means that if you have this trait in your population of corn, you basically have to live with it--where 'living with it' means up to 25% losses of seedlings.

If you have two healthy parent carriers--25% of the offspring plants will not have it (homozygous dominant gene--make chlorophyll), 50% of plants will have one copy (heterozygous--will still make chlorophyll, but are carriers like their parents), and 25% of plants will have two copies (homozygous recessive gene--will not make chlorophyll). Even though these seedlings die, the trait isn't selected against as the carriers perform fine in field conditions.

Interesting stuff!

This really is fascinating. I just witnessed the same thing in my garden, an all white maize plant. My question is how do they make food since plants use chlorophyll to do that.

Hi Dylan,

Welcome to Permies.

Dylan Farai wrote:This really is fascinating. I just witnessed the same thing in my garden, an all white maize plant. My question is how do they make food since plants use chlorophyll to do that.

They don't. That sprout will die when the seed is used up.

I found an all-albino lingonberry plant in the forest close to our land. It was still alive one year after I first spotted it. I guess there are two possibilities: Either it's not a whole plant, but a mutated shoot from an otherwise normal plant, or else it's being kept alive by the mycorrhiza...

Eino Kenttä wrote:I found an all-albino lingonberry plant in the forest close to our land. It was still alive one year after I first spotted it. I guess there are two possibilities: Either it's not a whole plant, but a mutated shoot from an otherwise normal plant, or else it's being kept alive by the mycorrhiza...

Wow. Love to see a pic. Do you know it it has produced berries?

Don't have pictures sadly. I'm not there right now. I'll see if I can find it again in the spring. It didn't have any berries either of the times I saw it, but might be too young.