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Post by billw on Jun 27, 2018 14:41:16 GMT -5
Chacoense starts tuberizing almost as soon as it emerges and the stolons can be several feet long even on very small plants. Unless it is well contained, once you plant one, you often have it forever.
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Post by billw on Jun 12, 2018 12:16:56 GMT -5
As long as the colder conditions come on gradually, the tubers will covert starch to sugar and can become very tolerant of freezing conditions. It isn't unusual for potatoes to survive zone 6 winters, particularly if the temperature warms considerably during the day or if there is snow cover.
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Post by billw on Jun 12, 2018 12:12:58 GMT -5
Beets are diploid and can self-pollinate, so you would get 25% white beets from a selfing of a variety that is heterozygous for y. If you started with only true breeding heirlooms, you wouldn't see that result, but if hybrids were included in the mix, you might. Do you know which varieties were included in the beet blend?
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Post by billw on May 27, 2018 16:00:35 GMT -5
The high dormancy diploids are more likely to have frost tolerance and the low dormancy diploids more likely to have heat tolerance. They ought to tuberize any time the day length is less than 12 hours. The high dormancy diploids often have some longer photoperiod types.
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Post by billw on May 24, 2018 10:16:50 GMT -5
Those look great. I think you are making some progress getting them adapted to your climate. Even the poor producer sounds like a good sources of valuable genes. Do they ever flower for you?
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Post by billw on May 20, 2018 21:35:23 GMT -5
Hemlock is 2n=22 and carrot is 2n=18. Pretty unlikely, I'd say.
Plus, there is the lack of any stories of people dying from eating crossed up carrots.
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Post by billw on May 19, 2018 12:09:48 GMT -5
I'm always amazed by how willing people are to talk to warantless police. I don't open the door for people selling steaks or religion and I'm certainly not going to for someone who is armed, nervous, and needs a biology lesson.
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Post by billw on May 4, 2018 13:40:08 GMT -5
I think that's perlite. Those stolons are not yet differentiated.
Incidentally, if the goal is to use jamesii to introduce dormancy to a domesticated diploid, that is going to be tricky. It is 1EBN. You would probably need to cross it through a 2EBN tetraploid first and then cross the resulting 2EBN tetraploid with the domesticated diploid, giving you a triploid.
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Post by billw on Apr 19, 2018 16:12:04 GMT -5
Well, now I have seen an arracacha seedling. They look pretty much like what you would expect from a member of Apiaceae. They are coming up in various colors from pale green to dark green to red/green, so that's encouraging. There should be some diversity to work with.
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Post by billw on Apr 18, 2018 3:09:38 GMT -5
Well, at last count, the list of people that I would like to have on was in the 80s and I've done 3, so I have my work cut out. Joseph is on the list and probably would have been among the first I asked, except that he just did a great podcast elsewhere.
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Post by billw on Apr 17, 2018 20:54:13 GMT -5
I recently started a podcast, where I interview people involved in the freelance plant breeding world in one way or another. I've so far talked with Nathan Kleinman of the Experimental Farm Network, Curzio Caravati of the Kenosha Potato Project, and Tom Wagner of Tater Mater Seeds. More episodes are planned, some with names that you will recognize from HG. You can find the episodes at the link or through iTunes or Google Play if you prefer. www.cultivariable.com/category/podcast/
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Post by billw on Apr 12, 2018 22:43:30 GMT -5
Yep, that's how you propagate it. In fact, that was the main objective today. The root harvest was just a bonus.
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Post by billw on Apr 12, 2018 17:54:42 GMT -5
This is the biggest arracacha root I have ever gotten. The normal expectation would be that one plant produces a bunch of these, but I'm pretty happy with it.
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Post by billw on Apr 8, 2018 12:57:49 GMT -5
This will just be a more long-winded version of the answers already given. The question here is whether or not your starting germplasm is heterozygous for the gene(s) that control bitterness. If it is controlled by a single gene, then if your source material is homozygous, it doesn't matter if the gene is dominant or recessive; in either case, you're stuffed. But, is it likely that your starting materials are homozygous or that bitterness is controlled by a single gene? Probably not. Wild collections tend to be more heterozygous than domesticated varieties. Polyploids tend to be more heterozygous than diploids. And, while I have no idea about the genetics of bitterness in Ipomoea, in every plant that I work with, bitterness is a polygenetic trait that that typically arises from more than one compound. So, I think that your chances of getting useful variability in bitterness are excellent.
Of course, it is also possible that you will get a lot of variability in the levels of bitter compounds that all exceed the threshold of your sense of taste. This is a problem with wild potatoes, for example - the level of glycoalkaloids can vary by an order of magnitude and yet still taste the same once you get past a certain point.
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Post by billw on Apr 3, 2018 14:54:01 GMT -5
Male sterility in sunflowers is cytoplasmic, so there is no way to get a pollen fertile variety by pollinating a male sterile variety, unfortunately. The cytoplasmic genome is always inherited from the female parent.
Some plants have nuclear genes that restore fertility even in the presence of cytoplasmic incompatibilities. I don't know if such a gene exists in Helianthus, but that would probably be your best prospect if you need to breed with CMS varieties.
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