Laravel 5.1 - DRY Create/Edit form when using a JSON object

I have a create form and edit form that incredibly similar, in fact there is only one key difference between them and this is where I need some help.

I want to extract the form into a partial so that I'm not repeating myself with it however I have a bit of an issue.

I'm saving a genetics array (genetics[]) to my DB as a JSON object, it can look like below for example:

{
    "Bell-Albino":"BA",
    "Rainwater-Albino":"na",
    "Tremper-Albino":"na",
    "Murphys-Patternless":"mp",
    "Eclipse":"EC",
    "Marble-Eye":"na",
    "Blizzard":"b",
    "Mack-Snow":"na",
    "Super-Snow":"SS",
    "Gem-Snow":"na",
    "TUG-Snow":"na",
    "Line-Bred-Snow":"na",
    "Enigma":"EN",
    "White-and-Yellow":"WY",
    "Wildtype":"na",
    "Giant":"na"
}

Below is an extract of code for the Bell-Albino field to show you how the rest of them are set up in the create view. I have to set the key for the value. Upon submission with errors, the Request::old() does what it needs to do and retains the value absolutely fine. This works fine and isn't broken:

<label for="genetics">Bell Albino</label>
<?php $options = array('na' => 'N/A', 'BA' => 'Visual', 'ba' => 'Recessive'); ?>
{!! Form::select(
    'genetics[Bell-Albino]', 
    $options, 
    Request::old('genetics[Bell-Albino]'), 
    array('class' => 'form-control')) 
!!}

And similarly, here is the same bit of code from the edit view. Once again, this works fine but it isn't DRY which is what concerns me.

<label for="genetics">Bell Albino</label>
<?php $options = array('na' => 'N/A', 'BA' => 'Visual', 'ba' => 'Recessive'); ?>
{!! Form::select(
    'genetics[Bell-Albino]', 
    $options, 
    $genetics[0]['Bell-Albino'], 
    array('class'=>'form-control')) 
!!}

In order for the genetics array values to be shown/displayed/selected properly when the page loads I had to json_decode my field value into a different array like this above my form:

<?php $genetics[] = json_decode($gecko->genetics, true); ?>

For those interested, so you know how the decoded object looks, this is the dump of $genetics:

array:1 [▼
  0 => array:16 [▼
    "Bell-Albino" => "BA"
    "Rainwater-Albino" => "na"
    "Tremper-Albino" => "na"
    "Murphys-Patternless" => "mp"
    "Eclipse" => "EC"
    "Marble-Eye" => "na"
    "Blizzard" => "b"
    "Mack-Snow" => "na"
    "Super-Snow" => "SS"
    "Gem-Snow" => "na"
    "TUG-Snow" => "na"
    "Line-Bred-Snow" => "na"
    "Enigma" => "EN"
    "White-and-Yellow" => "WY"
    "Wildtype" => "na"
    "Giant" => "na"
  ]
]

Now from the 2 pieces of code above you can see that the only real difference is where I'm using Request::old(). Is there any way to achieve a DRY way of using this form with a JSON object?

via Chebli Mohamed