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Post by cortona on Jul 10, 2013 17:14:22 GMT -5
me too! first time seing someting similar, if you have some extra seeds and want to share/trade let me know please
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Post by raymondo on Jul 10, 2013 21:04:58 GMT -5
I haven't seen them yet in Australia. How long have they been around?
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Post by Gianna on Jul 22, 2013 13:23:05 GMT -5
Wow.. small seeded watermelon.. Never heard of them. I think I want to give them a try next year.
As for the original experiment, I'm not sure it would work. There would be no way to stop multiple bees from visiting the same flowers be they either 2 or 4X. You might get some triploid crosses, but you would also most likely get a mix of both diploid and tetraploid pollen being deposited on all the flowers. You might get some fruits with reduced seed production because of some being 3X, which I suppose would be good too.
Even if you got some fruits with only triploid 'seeds' (seedless), how could you tell from the outside which had seeds, and which didn't? Or does that matter?
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Jul 22, 2013 13:35:36 GMT -5
Even if you got some fruits with only triploid 'seeds' (seedless), how could you tell from the outside which had seeds, and which didn't? Or does that matter? Round fruit with stripes = Diploid. Oblong fruit with light green skin = Tetraploid. Blocky (neither round nor oblong) fruit with stripes = Seedless Triploid. I planted a patch like this a while ago, but I think that the snails ate the plants to death, so this year I am working on isolating a tetraploid and a round diploid with striped fruit. I hope to try again next year in a field without snails.
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Post by Gianna on Jul 22, 2013 14:38:15 GMT -5
Thanks. I hadn't read your very first post carefully enough to know there were such physical differences. I hope it works, but I still think there will be lots of bees who will visit multiple flowers of both ploidy levels with lots of pollen mixing. Just a guess however.
Sorry about your snails. They can be a real problem here in moister years. Not so bad recently however. I had ground squirrels and bunnies take out my cantaloupes and cukes this year. At least they spared the other cucurbits. Mostly.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Jul 22, 2013 18:03:44 GMT -5
The diploid that I have selected for this experiment is yellow fleshed: The presumed tetraploid I have selected is red fleshed (Charleston Gray Tetraploid): Be interesting to see what color flesh the seedless triploids have. I'm not much worried about the ratios of seedless to diploid to tetraploid. As long as I have some diploids and some tetraploids every year, I'm OK with not knowing what the offspring will be. I just checked the planting. There is one diploid and one presumed tetraploid plant still alive, but the stems have been chewed 3/4 of the way through. I covered them with dirt up to the first leaves, just in case they send out roots from a node. Late in the season though to expect fruit.
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Post by steev on Jul 22, 2013 21:09:04 GMT -5
Bummer. Pests can be a pain.
Saturday, early evening, still very light, while the song-dogs were tuning up down the barranca, I heard something rustling along my fence; a skunk, first I've seen on the farm; welcome to be sure, as it'll eat rodents, if it can. Not the species common to the SF Bay Area and the Central Valley, which has a wide white stripe down the back; this one had a stripe that split on the shoulders and re-united at the hip.
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Post by 12540dumont on Jul 23, 2013 21:43:17 GMT -5
Steev, you can have all my skunks. Whew...
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Post by steev on Jul 23, 2013 23:10:35 GMT -5
Truth be told, I'd like to have a skunk caught as a kitten, de-scented, and raised as a pet. Granted, they're largely nocturnal, myopic, and not too bright, but they can be pleasant, sort of like a dim cat.
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