True Oca Seed — Germination and Selection

Last year I saved a small amount of true oca seed, survivors of the mouse incident, painstakingly collected from plants in my old allotments before my house move. Despite domestic chaos, in February I set up the heated propagator on a window ledge, and sowed the precious few within.
Then I waited ... and waited. And nothing happened.
After a month I was resigned to the idea that this was just going to be another failure, and so evicted the seed tray from the propagator to make way for more reliable crops.
It was dumped in the greenhouse for another few weeks before it started to get in the way there too, and was ruthlessly removed to the 'slow death table', an outdoor surface reserved for horticultural failures which should really be flung, ... usually the last stop before the compost bins.
But in early July, I noticed some characteristic greenery in the tray (right of centre below)....

... yup. Oca seedlings fully five months after sowing! I can only speculate that the seed requires high light levels, and/or has a long dormancy period. Anyway, I swiftly potted them up, and resumed their basic care.

In the search for day-length neutral varieties of oca, some sort of early selection is needed to cull the no-hopers, and my chosen method is simply to examine roots at the start of October, and discard any plants that show no sign of tubers. This may seem hard, and perhaps risks loosing certain desirable traits (such as floriferousness or taste), but if I don't do it I'm going to end up with massive numbers of plants to manage and record.

Here are my seedlings undergoing the October test...

... notice the small tubers on the left plant, which means it will be planted out in the lazy beds.

... and some other varieties grown in Root trainers get the same treatment ...

So I would now like to introduce what will hopefully be the first of a long line of home-brewed oca varieties...

... to be known for now as IOW 2 (that's Isle of Wight 2, after its birthplace) ... by far the best performer from my seedlings, producing a respectable yield straight from seed in one season. This year I can grow it conventionally from tubers to give a fair comparison with established varieties.

They'll have to wait a bit though; it's -2°C and snowing outside.