Re: Genetics 101 & 102
I'm not a genetisist either, but I used to raise poultry
for show. Standard proceedure was to line breed to "fix" a
desired quality in a line.
Most breeders considered the best way to do this was to
breed father to daughter, or mother to son. Very difficult
with AGs since they're annuals. I wonder if pollen could be
harvested and stored(maybe freezing it), you could then
breed last year's "father" to this years daughter. I also
wonder if it would be worth the trouble, since pumpkins may
behave differently than chickens. You'd also have to save
pollen from every line, untill the females came to maturity
to know which plants had the right stuff. But if it's
do-able, then you could even use the same pollen that the
that was used to get the large fruit, ensuring that at
least one half of the genes would be identical to the big
fruit.
The only time poultry breeders would break from line
breeding was to introduce desired qualities that the
existing line didn't possess. The ofspring were then
checked to see if they got the wanted quality. If you then
wanted to boost that quality, you'd breed that offspring
back to the parent that had that quality to enforce that
gene type. You could then go back to line breeding to
better set that type. This style of breeding is much easier
to do with poultry than with AGs. But I thought some of it
may be usable with AGs. I think harvesting pollen would be
extremely usefull if it can be done, maybe someone in the
group has experience with the viability of it.
=====
Good fishing!
Matt Moore
Visit my Severum Page at:
http://www.virtualseeds.com/matt.html
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