squash
There has been some discussion on the list as to the determination of squash
vs pumpkin, and how we should deal with such fruit at weighoff. I have been
observing the inheritance and character traits in these giants to find some
clues as to how this works out. I have written one paper concerning this so
far, but haven't shown many people because it isn't a complete paper. I have
determined one thing which I believe to be true in the area of inheritance of
color. There is a precocious gene that shows the softball size stage fruit to
be either green, or not green (white, yellow). This precocious gene is
related to whether the fruit will be a squash or a pumpkin. That is all
precocious green are squash unless I do some severe color manipulation during
growth. The other precocious colors indicate pumpkin, and depending on
varying degrees of shade will produce varying degrees of squash off color in
the fruit which is predominately pumpkin color. Now when I am doing
classification for pumpkin or squash in my genetic notes, I consider anything
that does not have the precocious green gene to be a pumpkin. For scientific
reasons this is a good and accurate way of classifying between the two. For
weighoff and public display maybe different rules are necessary, but due to
the amount of manipulation that can be done by an individual, it is difficult
to classify.
Just some thoughts, I was wondering if anyone else had any similar or contrary
genetic observations or ideas.
Nic Welty
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