Re: 300 pound stock
>I would repeat on this subject.
>Look to the grandparents for the size of the fruit you want. I think I
>understand that the genetics for the plant are not passed directly into the
>next generation, but rather into the seeds of the next generation. I
Huh?!
>am able
>to be corrected on this, and my pride will not be hurt.
>It would really be interesting to see a list of the generation behind the
>small mothers of big offspring that Peter Paynter posted. Were the
>grandparent big mothers?
>Yet one more question to drive Mike Brock into insomnia!
>John
>
Almost everything about this drives me into insomnia! I actually have spent
all night a lot of times going over and over hundreds of crosses and trying
to trace certain genetic patterns, etc. It almost drove me crazy. (Well,
crazier). Anyway, I don't know if I follow what you are saying. The pollen
used for pollination of a female flower will make up half of the genetics of
the seeds in that fruit, but it doesn't affect THAT specific fruit, only the
seeds in it. The parents have just as much influence as the parents of any
other living organism. I think what gets confused is that sometimes people
refer to the parents of a PUMPKIN, as in the fruit itself, instead of the
parents of the PLANT that produced that pumpkin. "Parents" of a pumpkin
fruit could mean different things to different people. Some might say the
pollenator used to pollinate that pumpkin is the "father", while others will
say the "father" is the plant that pollinated the female from which the seed
that grew the plant that produced that pumpkin came from. The confusion
happens because when someone talks about a specific cross, they could be
talking about the pumpkin itself, the seeds in that pumpkin, or the seeds
that the pumpkin came from. So I just always refer to the PLANT, and the
seeds that grew the plant, since technically, it is what we are really
talking about.
So, someone might get confused and call the pollenator plant used to
pollinate a specific pumpkin the "father" of that pumpkin, and then refer to
it as the grandfather of fruit grown from the seeds in that pumpkin. But it
really is ONLY the father of the seeds in that pumpkin and the plants grown
from them.
Did I just make this all more confusing?! AUGH! Sorry if I did! It really is
very simple, but hard to put into writing!
-Steve
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