HYB: more seeds vs less seeds

I'm sure I'm not the only one who, with the impending bloom season, is giving some thought to the idea that more seeds/pods from a cross is better.
   
  I was mulling over whether this might be a better way to approach my flat breeding, especially since so many flats are pollen sterile. I could use the same pollen on say an entire stalk of SIX PACK (which in 05 set 5 pods totaling 112 seeds).  That might produce a lot of seeds which theoretically would mean more potential flat babies or flat carriers.  Of course I could also 'discover' a lethal cross and end up with no SIX PACK pods at all.  Worse than that I'ld have to decide which cross was the most important to get babies from! ack! <vbg>
   
  That doesn't sound very good to me, at least not at this stage of my game.
   
  But, this one stalk per cross idea might work better for me if the two parents in question are not flat but are suspected to carry flat genes.  If I cross FREE SPACE to  AFTER THE DAWN one stalk of each then I could get more babies that would have a higher dosage of the suspected flat [recessive] gene even if they didn't express the trait.  
   
  Speaking from Betty's big picture point of view that might give me more seedlings that could be inter-crossed to at least increase the dosage of the flat.  Now then, within those F1 and F2 generations I could still reselect iris with 'mainstream' desireable traits; form, bud count, branching, etc.  If I pursued this angle, ultimately, in theory, I could have a strain of higher and higher dosage suspected flat carriers that are 'already' selected for 'mainstream' traits before the dosage actually produced a flat.
   
  Presumably then, when you crossed progeny resulting from these 'suspected carriers' back to a flat parent (even if you used a different parent per pod) you would have 'better' chances. 
   
  But does that then make those who are themselves flats 'ladies in waiting'?
  (lol, love it! since they're mostly pollen sterile anyway)
   
  I'm most intrigued by this notion,  of course it would work the same way for any trait... maybe even 'vale survivability'.
   
  Christian
   

		
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