Re: the pumpkin Eve

Dan:

This is a very important issue to the sport.   I am very  interested and
concered about these issues.  Unfortunately I have felt that the group as a
whole has not been as concerned about it as they should.   Run a search in
the archieves I know I have participated in several very pointed
discussions on this already.  

For the most part the general census has been that the selection process
that we all do by growing the seeds from the biggest fruit is sufficient.  
I believe that this process has been a huge role in the sucess of the past
decade of weight gains, but... 

However, both common sense, and major crop failure real life experiences
show us that this is not the way to go.  Would you have to mention anything
more than the Potato famine and the Southern corn wilt?

Dan I would love to dive into this discussion actively with you and anyone
else that is interested.   I don't feel it is a panic situation, but none
the less very worthy of disussing.   Genetic diversity is very important.

Lets keep talking  

Rick

----------
> From: Dan Shapiro <dgs@leland.stanford.edu>
> To: pumpkins@mallorn.com
> Subject: the pumpkin  Eve
> Date: Friday, January 09, 1998 2:58 PM
> 
> I had a scan through Al Eaton's amazing pumpkin geneology charts, and
> managed to compile a lineage for my own pumpkin back ~9 generations!  As
> expected, there were about 5 ancestors (TOTAL) at the leaves of the tree.
> With a little more data, I suspect I could push it back to a single
pumpkin
> "Eve".
> 
> That makes me wonder:
> 
> (1) Is this healthy?  Assuming all large gourds trace back to a very few
> plants, are we headed for an inbreeding crash?  I'm thinking of a shared
> susceptibility to some viral disease.
> 
> (2) If the genetic potential was determined by those few ancestors, are
our
> cross-breeding experiments really about "distilling out" vs "breeding in"
> new traits?  If distillation is the right model, it suggests the maximum
> pumpkin size for this seed line is written on the wall... we just can't
> read the handwriting yet.
> 
> (3) Assuming pumpkin size is encoded by multiple genes, should we be
> reaching outside that handfull of ancestors to expand the genetic
potential
> of the line?
> 
> Of course,this might not be the right time to regroup since pumpkins are
> still getting bigger by leaps and bounds.
> 
> 	Dan Shapiro
> 
> 
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