A few thoughts about pumpkin breeding

The correct way to breed a consistent seed stock would be to have 15 to 20 people agree to grow the same seed stock and all agree to self the fruit, then select from all the fruit grown a couple at most new seed stocks that have the characteristics that best resemble the parent. The same growers then grow from only the selected seed stock and so on until all fruit are consistent. Just selfing and growing one each separately and without a co-operative effort wouldn't work because of the infinite variability of a selfed fruit. Sure a person might get lucky but you can't count on luck. How do you know that your (insert favorite seed here) was THE one? All seeds from an individual fruit segregate according to the laws of Mendelian genetics unfortunately we have not been able to ascertain the the dominant , co-dominant or recessive genes, therefore the number of plants that must be grown to have at least one have the desired characteristics is unknown.
We kind of do this already by selecting seeds from each other that we then grow the next season.
Now while we are doing this someone somewhere is crossing two big ones and hiding in the resulting seed stock maybe only one seed that will pass on it's genes to the one ton fruit . That person is also selecting from seed stocks but for slightly different reasons. That is why weights keep on increasing .It is the constant selection of seeds for weight.
Because of the law of segregation a remake of cross that is is exactly the same is unlikely, however it is obvious that some seed stocks breed truer(935,801,846 for example) than others and remakes involving such seed stocks enjoy some success. That doesn't mean you shouldn't try ,just that the results might be different and who knows may be the remake might be better!
Now get out there and make the next great seed stock selfed or crossed doesn't matter as long as we get to one ton! 

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