status update 28Jan04

Yesterday I spend close to an hour on the phone with Mike and Anne Lowe, discussing, among other things, our SAGE project.  When I mentioned that my early supposition about Schreiner blues being about as far from Sass-origin as one could get Mike commented that many early blues include a Sass seedling "bbpl" which referred to  the "big, blue plicata."  So the blues won't do as a set of possible parents as a class that do *not* have high probability of already containing SA genetics, either dominant or recessive.  Both Mike Lowe's comment and the Suttons' experience run counter to that early assumption
 
Correspondence with Mike Sutton, however, has produced the following information.  When asked if the Suttons had run across varieties that produced very few or *no* SA's in the first generation, Mike commented that this was a difficult question to answer, but what came to mind were DOUBLE BUBBLE, BLACKOUT, QUITO and DYNAMITE. 
 
I have traced these pedigrees back several generations and do not find much commonality.  Both Dynamite and Blackout have some common ancestry in BLACK FOREST, but it is such a minimal overlap it may have no significance whatever.
 
Of these, the only one I have is Dynamite, and it has not been an aggressive grower here.  In three years, one fan tried to bloom, was lost to frost, but left two increases.  I gave one of those away, and the one kept has not increased visibly.  *If* it blooms, I can try crossing it with an SA providing what I have produces bloom.
 
I have Ghio's CORDOBA, which has half its ancestry closely related to Quito, but the other half is from Blyth breeding and is not closely related at all.  I expect several bloomstalks from it this year and could make crosses of the type (SA x possibly no SA) with it.
 
Ghio's DOUBLE BUBBLE comes close to being a "Schreiner light blue."  The ones I have that have reasonably close or similar breeding include DELTA BLUES, MIAH JANE (from the same parentage as DB) and SKYLARK'S SONG.  I could try one or more of these, although I believe I remember Mike Sutton remarking that they had gotten SA's from Delta Blues.
 
The purpose in making crosses with "cv's not producing SA's" is to uncover, one might hope, either or both of two possible interpretations of SA genetics:  1) The SA traits are a single weak dominant with results varying with dosage, and/or 2) SA traits, whether dominant or recessive, can be masked by a dominant "normalizing factor" analogous to the dominant white "I" factor in relation to blues.
 
Our other cross types *may* reveal, in large enough quantities and careful counts of progeny types, whether the distribution of forms and variation of SA traits conform to a Punnett square of 1) a single recessive, 2) a single weak dominant, 3) one one of several Punnett squares assuming a two factor condition of any one of four types (AB, Ab, aB or ab) or something even more complex.
 
Those of us with digital cameras (or access to a digital camera) can, without great cost but with some effort, photograph each seedling, paying especially close attention in non-SA seedlings to the presence or absence of the "ledge" characteristic, then transfer the photos to disk or CD's, provided we have compatible software for viewing the images.
 
Having "hard copy" in the form of photos as well as our brief notes ensures the data are accessible to others.
 
I have a further suggestion that I want to toss out with the group.  The AIS has a resource we haven't discussed tapping in Don Spoon.  He is, I believe, a doctoral level biologist with a great deal of genetic expertise.  How about our trying to enlist him, or at least run past him our proposed design(s) once those are fairly well formulated?  A critique and input from a knowledgeable geneticist might just save us a *lot* of work.  We already have a fairly high level of genetic knowledge among us with Chuck Chapman and perhaps others.  How do you all feel about drawing on a resource such as Don?  Unless I misremember something I saw in the R&I's, I believe Don has had his fingers in the SA pot. Comments?
 
More "just thinking...."
Neil Mogensen    z 7 western NC
 
 

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