My mating system
- To: pumpkins@mallorn.com
- Subject: My mating system
- From: H* E* P*
- Date: Thu, 08 Apr 1999 13:14:18 -0700
Dear Pumpkin list
Before I began mating small fruits, I talked to most of the important
breeders at a North American Strawberry meeting.
To my question "What parents would you suggest", they all said the
same thing. 1) write down your goal. 2) study all the cultivars
available to you pick as parents the cultivars which most nearly have
the traits you seek.
My main goals were deep red interior color and good, sweet taste. So I
tried to find two parents like that which were also productive, and had
lots of disease resistance. The results were pretty good. About 1
progeny in 1000 was quite nice.
For pumpkins, there is a huge problem, no one person can grow 1000
plants to pick the best one.
From fruit we have another lesson. The people who have done a lot of
selecting, tell me looking at the same 100 plants the second year of
fruiting, they often select as top plant one they marked for discarding
during the first fruiting season.
In fact the top sweetpotato, Beauregard, was discarded, but the
fieldman who was told to discard Beauregard kept it as a side project.
--
Harold Eddleman Ph.D. Microbiologist. i*@disknet.com
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