Re: Pumpkin size - Seed size

     Steve, I still don't think that these plants are evolving as you say. 
Since evolution is a blind process that selects against undesirable jeans
instead of picking desirable ones, it seems as if we are just taking better
care of the plants and breading them better.  We are picking desirable traits
and masking undesirable traites by babing our plants from seed to pumpkin 5
months later.  We are keeping undesirable traits around.  For one, the size
of these pumpkins and leaves creates a huge surface area problem.  This
causes the plants to lose a ton of water.  Also, we take such good care of
these pumpkins that they may start producing fewer and fewer seeds.  To some
degree, plants make seeds in responce to stress.  When a plant feels it needs
to pass on more genes, it produces many seeds.  In fact, the fitness of a
plant is its ability to pass on genes to the next generation.  Look at Larry
Checkon's pumpkin.  He had no viable seeds.  It seems we may be producing
plants that are less fit.  This may end up being our limiting factor. 
--- Great Pumpkin <greatpumpkin99@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Just wanted to throw out a few comments so you guys can add what you 
> think....
> First, about small pumpkins producing big fruit. Yeah it happens, but in
> the 
> end I think it is simple plant evolution. Seeds from bigger pumpkins should
> 
> produce bigger fruit, in the end, when it all is calculated. The problem is
> 
> probably that there isn't near enough data to go by, so these 
> inconsistancies show up. But if you look, the weights of pumpkins from
> which 
> the best seeds come from are getting higher and higher, on average.
> 
> About seed size....well I never really thought this made much difference, 
> since it is really all in the genes. For example, look at a tiny seed like
> a 
> mustard seed, or a seed from a pine cone, hardly visible. But they will
> grow 
> into a MASSIVE plant!
> But then again, when you compare seeds from the same pumpkin, they have 
> closer genetic properties to each other, so if you take that into 
> consideration, an also consider that the seed size is related to how big
> the 
> embryo is, which is basically the baby plant, it COULD mean something. I 
> mean a bigger baby plant seems like it would lead to a bigger plant in 
> general, when "bigger" means larger, relative to it's siblings. Although I 
> don't know what this would mean for fruit size, it still seems that bigger 
> seeds would be more likely to produce bigger plants, for whatever that is 
> worth.
> Seed size and pumpkin size *is* sort of backwards related though, since 
> compare a good A.G. seed to those from say, a Burpee Prizewinner. Big 
> difference! And the seeds do seem to keep getting bigger, to me anyway.
> What does everyone else think?
> 
> -Steve
> 
> 
> 
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