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Post by Hristo on Feb 20, 2010 21:18:20 GMT -5
Is there any available tetraploid varieties. Other than Tetra Baby, which I have, but past 3-4 years it does not perform well. Yes, my soil is not very good for watermelons too, but this variety performs especially bad. Is there other varieties?
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Post by castanea on Feb 20, 2010 22:21:53 GMT -5
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Post by canadamike on Feb 21, 2010 8:00:33 GMT -5
I doubt they would ever be released. This is research material, none in the genebanks... It would be worth it to treat tetra baby like a precious thing, as it is not important for the quality of the fruit but the few 4x seeds it produces. I was not lucky with it either, downy mildew killed everything, citulus and others, in that patch...
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Post by Hristo on Feb 21, 2010 10:39:10 GMT -5
Considering how many tetraploid lines exist around the world it's a bit strange that only one variety is (barely) available. No seed leak! And even Tetra Baby is very hard to find, especially now when Ken Allan's site is down. Sure it's precious thing. BTW for 3 or 4 years growing I was able to taste no more than 2-3 well ripe watermelons and I find the taste not bad at all, even I would say very good!
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Post by Alan on Feb 21, 2010 20:30:57 GMT -5
Is there any available tetraploid varieties. Other than Tetra Baby, which I have, but past 3-4 years it does not perform well. Yes, my soil is not very good for watermelons too, but this variety performs especially bad. Is there other varieties? I agree, Tetra Baby never does well here or I would already have released seed for it, I'm in the third year of increase now and plan to offer it next season. Taste wise it is very similar to sugar baby. I too have been searching for other Tetraploids Histro and can't find any either, perhaps someone will see our posts here and point us in the right direction? Alan Kapuler? |
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Post by canadamike on Feb 21, 2010 21:38:12 GMT -5
These lines are not released because they are thr chicken that lay the golden egg.
Seedless watermelons are a cash cow for the industry...they keep them sealed...I guess some of us will have to work with colchicine...just befriend your pharmacist, folks...
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Post by Hristo on Feb 21, 2010 23:25:40 GMT -5
That is true. But I'm sure there are A LOT unused/inferior/abandoned lines that will do no harm to the company's $$$ if released. Probably the main reason for their scarcity is because there is no demand for them. Very few people know what tetraploid watermelon means and for what is used.
BTW does anyone know the history behind Tetra Baby?
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Post by canadamike on Feb 21, 2010 23:44:58 GMT -5
Yep, Ken Alan told me:
His favorite seedless watermelon became unavailable, a food chain having bought the rights.
He went on a mission of creating his own, and after a lot of trial and error, not really knowing what he was doing, he found, amongst loads of weird plants, a true tetraploid. It is an inspiring story in a way, and more of us should be doing like he did, if there is a crowd who can it is us.
It is possible to find ideal cilchicine concentration data on the net. And it can also be used on buds in trees or plants etc...
Tetraploids are not necesseraly productive, they are around to play havoc in the genes, really...and never produce many seeds.
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Post by raymondo on Feb 22, 2010 4:49:21 GMT -5
So, are all tetraploids not very fertile? Or just the watermelon tetraploids? It seems odd, doesn't it, that these watermelons should be so mean with their seeds when a doubling of ploidy after a wide cross is often very helpful in restoring fertility.
And where would one buy colchicine?
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Post by robertb on Feb 22, 2010 11:38:11 GMT -5
The old emmer and durum wheats (modern ones are hexaploid) must have been productive of seed since that's the whole point of growing the stuff! It may be purely a squash characteristic.
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Post by Hristo on Feb 22, 2010 14:24:09 GMT -5
Getting pure colchicine is even harder than getting tetraploid variety. I have never been able to get it. I see there are pills containing it, but I imagine how low is the content, sinse it's a deadly poison too.
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Post by spacecase0 on Feb 22, 2010 15:51:08 GMT -5
I have a colchicine plant growing (colchicium), anyone know how to proses it ? I thought that you take the plant and mash it up (I could never do this to mine as I have grown attached to it now) then mix it with water, mix, remove the pulp, and then evaporate the water, and the powder that is left is mostly colchicine, but I am not sure about this. a few other plants also have colchicine in them, it should be possible to come up with some on your own. my issue is that I have no idea how to use it on plants, or I would have come up with some by now. edit: I found this www.ijpsonline.com/article.asp?issn=0250-474X;year=2006;volume=68;issue=6;spage=806;epage=809;aulast=Bharathiso it looks like Gloriosa Superba may be better at getting your colchicine |
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Post by spacecase0 on Feb 22, 2010 16:11:57 GMT -5
I bet that you only need the petroleum ether, ammonia and ethanol to extract the colchicine
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Post by canadamike on Feb 22, 2010 16:46:53 GMT -5
The quantities ( % of actual colchicine in the solution) are actually lower than what is in the pills. I am a good friend of my pharmacist and he agreed to give me some last year, asked me what the needed concentrations would have to be, he as a scale precise to 1/1000 gram
There is info on the net
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Post by jonnyyuma on Feb 23, 2010 20:33:02 GMT -5
Hello,
We find when converting diploids to tetraploid some strange things occur. We aren't too successfull, even at the level of culturing thousands of attempts. The concept is simple but weird things occur all the time. Often times we get nothing out of it at all. Most seed companies do tetraploid breeding. Almost all tetraploids are very related and come from a small gene pool. This is because of the difficulty of getting a good tetraploid. There appears to be genetic control of this, but no one has done the work on it academically speaking. If you want tetraploids and don't mind paying for them, you can buy 1000 seeds of a commercially grown seedless watermelon, plant them out and do one of two things: 1. Keep pollinators out of the field and what ever sets is tetraploid as tetraploid pollen will not work with triploid. 2. Buy a blocky seedless type and look for elongated or round shapes of the ovary prior to pollenation. Round and elongated shapes are fixed and you cross the two to get the heterzygous "blocky" shape. The only problem with this is that 1000 triploid seeds is like $120-150 U.S.
If anyone wants to know the history of seedless watermelons send me a pm. It is quite a long one and I don't want to take up the space here.
Later on,
Jonny
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