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Re: breeding rules

Breeding for a champion pumpkin involves a lot more work and space than
most on this e-mail list can afford.  In its place, the most important
"rule" is good luck.

Crossing virtually identical Atlantic Giant Pumpkins parents (ie: Greer
1006 X Zeher 1061) in an attempt to obtain hybrid vigor is a waste of time.
 Crossing one species of the same genus with a completely different species
creates hybrid vigor.  This is how you get Big Boy Tomatoes and Super
Sweet, sweet corn.  Hybrid vigor can add 100% more sugar to sweet corn and
make a tomato 50% larger than either parent.  

If you crossed Goderich Giant Pumpkin with Genuine Mammoth Pumpkin you'd
see tremendous hybrid vigor.  The resulting pumpkins could be 50% larger
than either of the two parents.  However, the seed from that huge hybrid
pumpkin would not be stable.  Meaning, if you planted all 500 seeds from
that single pumpkin you would get 500 completly different pumpkins, in
shape, size, color, etc. and none of these would be as large as the hybrid
parent.

From your pumpkin patch with 500 plants, you'd self-pollinate every single
female blossom with a male blossom from the same plant. This might give you
1500 or so pumpkins.  From these 1500 you choose the single biggest
pumpkin. You get 500 seeds, re-plant next season, self-pollinate, choose
the largest, etc.  After three seasons or so of this selction process you
begin to stablize the new variety.  Once it is stable you could cross your
new variety with another stable variety, say Mamomoth Tours Pumpkin.  Then
you go through the entire ordeal again, selecting the biggest, growing it
out for seed, re-planting, etc. until you have stabilized your newer
variety. 

That is called BREEDING.

At the end of this process the Dill Family called the resulting variety
Atlantic Giant.
They used three different varieties, the above named, to obtain the
Atlantic Giant, which was further selected to obtain the patented vareity
Dill's Atlantic Giant.

SELECTION is something completly different.

If you take a single seed from a world record, championship Atlantic Giant
Pumpkin and grow it out, you will most likely obtain a larger pumpkin than
if you grew out the seed from a 100 pound AGP - even if you grow it in a
gravel drive way!

If you continually choose, or SELECT, the seed from the largest pumpkin in
the patch, year after year, you will theoretically grow a larger pumpkin
every year.  In this manner we will eventually grow a fruit that weights a
ton.

If durring the 1997 season someone had grown Zeher 1061 and Greer 1006 and
self pollinated each into itself, then done the same thing, self pollinated
the offspring, year after year for 3 years or so, in the year 2001, then
that person crossed the off spring of Zeher with the off spring of Greer,
there is the chance of seeing the effects of hybrid vigor - although most
likely the effect would be slight.  Again hybrid vigor is obtained by
crossing two different varieties, not two of the same variety, the greater
the difference between the two varieties the greater the vigor.  This will
be the method used by the individual who grows the first 2,000 lbs pumpkin
when the rest of the crowd is still growing 1,500 lbs pumpkins.

SUMMARY
When choosing seed for the next season try to obtain seed from the largest
pumpkin.  Place only minor value in long genological studies which claim
anything beyond the fruit of the most recient planting.  Again, SELECT seed
from the biggest pumpkin - then cross your fingers, not the flowers from
different plants.

Michael in Akron
mcohill@neo.lrun.com








----------
> From: Dan Shapiro <dgs@leland.stanford.edu>
> To: pumpkins@athenet.net
> Subject: breeding rules
> Date: Tuesday, October 28, 1997 7:13 PM
> 
> As a result of the growing seed-swap I'm starting to see alot of genetic
> information about pumpkin seeds, mostly the weights of the enclosing
> pumpkin and of its parents.   I've seen one chart that went back 5
> generations, all the way to a Dill ancestor in ~90.  I find it hard to
> evaluate the various prospects, and am looking for some help.
> 
> What heuristics do people use to identify desireable seeds?  I won't say
> "rules", since that would imply too much hubris, but here are some ideas
to
> get the ball rolling:
> 
> (1) the greater the number of Big  pumpkins in the ancestry, the better.
> (2) the bigger the immediate parent, the better
> (3) open pollination is luck-of-the-draw.  Prefer known crosses.
> (4) self-pollination is desirable only on proven seeds
> (5) the vigor of the parent plant is approximately as important as the
> parent's
>       weight.
> 
> I imagine the most general rule is to pick plants with desireable traits
> and breed them into the developing line.  We tend to equate desireable
with
> "huge", but I wonder if that isn't an overemphasis (see #5).
> 
> Anyone out there have background in animal husbandry?   Ideas from that
> area must be relevant.
> 
> Come to think of it, how long did it take Howard Dill to develope the
> Atlantic Giant line?  What rules did *he* use?
> 
> 	Dan Shapiro
>
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