Re: MY SEEDS! Who needs them? HELP!!!!
- To: pumpkins@mallorn.com
- Subject: Re: MY SEEDS! Who needs them? HELP!!!!
- From: S*@aol.com
- Date: Sun, 6 Jun 1999 03:32:17 EDT
In a message dated 6/6/99 1:57:19 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
indbio@disknet.com writes:
> Selfing does make a line more homozygous (pure), but it is more likely
> (due to chance) to become pure for the undesired traits. To make the big
> improvements that corn breeders made, you need to plant huge numbers of
> the progeny and then select the desired plants.
That is basically what every AG grower does, except maybe not the large
number of plants. I figure that if each generation of a selfed strain is
better than the previous, we are going in the right dorection. The 567
Mombert strain isn't noterious for 1000+ pumpkins, BUT the AVERAGE fruit
weight of all produced fruit is higher than almost any other strain, so those
are much better genetics for breeding than seeds form 1 1000 pounder that has
a history of 400 pound fruits or less. In that case the 1000 pounder was a
"fluke". What I was saying is that this strain (618 Wallace (567.5 Mombert x
self) x self) is more pure, for the good genetics of an already superior
strain. (My pumpkin probably would have topped 618 if it wouldn't have been
destroyed).
> genetics. However, we are selecting mainly for weight and color and
> there is great risk that traits like resistance to diseases and pests
> will be lost.
Not really. In order to GET a heavy fruit on a plant, the plant obviusly has
to have good resistance to diseases. No BIG fruits were ever produced on
unhealthy plants!
So the disease resistance kind of goes hand in hand with the fruit size.
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