Naked Seeded Squash Breeding

[raymondo]

Tell us more about your project Shivani.

I have some F2 seed of my Lady Godiva x Thelma Sanders Sweet Potato cross if anyone is interested. I want to keep about hundred but that still leaves quite a few.

Since I'm limited by what I can sensibly manage, I'll grow out 10 or so F2 each year looking for good flavour and texture. As soon as I find one I'll cross it into another naked seeded line to enhance the chances of finding what I want. Breeding squash is rather daunting!

[canadamike]

Ray:

I was planning to do that cross this week, so if you are at the F-2 stage, I would save a year. I would much love to assist you in that project. Can I be in? I have ample room to grow stuff.

Out of the 30 naked seeded squash the GRIN curator sent me, 19 were true naked seeded ones. The others, I suspect, had ''naked seeds'' in the descriptors so she had the technicians include them, but they were not. I see these kinds of errors happen often with GRIN descriptors. Anyway I have 19 growing like crazy. I'll evaluate them this year and start to cross next year. This also means I'll have a huge amount of mass crossed naked seeds this fall since I don't have time to self them this year...

[atash]

Michel, what are your breeding goals? I'm trying to get a dual-purpose pepo (and, eventually, a hull-less maxima). One that I can eat the flesh and the seeds.

"Triple Treat" is already that way (sort of; the seeds are not fully hull-less but the hulls are thin and papery), but I want a smaller, earlier pumpkin with top-quality flesh. Also, I want different colors, not just plain orange. I'd like green with white striations spotted with a bit of orange, like a Delicata but with orange flecks. And I want a pumpkin shape but with prominent ribs. Aesthetics are important!

I tried using "Sweet Dumpling" for its colors, shape, and sweet flesh, but it has been a poor performer this year. The seed might be part of the problem; I only got around 30% germination. Some of the seedlings turned yellow and died after planting out. The seedlings lacked vigor--it didn't help that this year was freakishly cool, but Sweet Dumpling was the worst performer (Lady Godiva seems to be the best). I stumbled across the description of Thelma Sanders on the Seed Savers website and ordered a whole bunch, but Ray has already beat both of us to the punch. Judging from customer reviews Thelma Sanders sounds like a good match for vigor and productivity.

I'll still need some other types to contribute better shell colors--maybe I'll use Sugar Lump which is an extraordinarily sweet Delicata type without the propensity for powdery mildew. Unfortunately its colors are not quite right--instead of white the bands are a dull shade of deep cream. I think I want more green, and a much paler shade of off-white.

I seem to recall you had an accidental hybrid involving Sweet Dumpling that had some hybrid vigor.

[raymondo]

Michel, PM headed your way.

Atash, good to have aesthetic as well as practical goals. Since you're doing the breeding work, you might as well have it look the way you want. That was part of the motivation for my Green Glaze collard/red cabbage cross.

[atash]

Raymondo, aesthetics are sometimes practical too. Think about it..what sells the squash? The copy that says "blah blah blah", or the PICTURE of that STUNNING squash that you just HAVE to HAVE?!

People judge books by their covers.

This is something I found from my apartment business: if you ask people what they want in an apartment, they say "blah blah blah" (mostly, lots of storage for all their too-much stuff), but when you present them with an apartment that is very clean, stylish, and sharp-looking, they respond instantly and favorably like nothing else, and forget to ask about closet space.

[Walk]

Hi,

Since I started this thread, I thought I'd update on my project's harvest. The original intent was to cross Kakai with Squisito Spaghetti squash. The Squisito seed, purchased from Fedco, only produced 1 sprout from the whole package with seed started indoors in a germination tray. No problems with any other squash, cukes, melon. So the project was entirely abandoned at the beginning. Meanwhile, I had acquired a packet of Little Greenseed from an SSE member in NY and planted 7 hills of it instead. Yesterday we gutted the fruits to process the seeds and were extremely disappointed to find that over half were not naked-seeded at all and only some of the green-seeded ones were entirely naked-seeded. The seeds were somewhat more abundant than Kakai but the quality of those that had green seeds was not as nice as Kakai, nor were they as large. Some of the fruits were oblong shaped and size was all over the place. I don't know if the seed was mixed up in packaging or if the variety is really this unstable. Even the hand pollinations I did for saving seed of this variety were 50/50 naked/not naked. So I wasted a year and have not much to eat for my efforts as we cooked up some of the fruit and it's basically not edible unless you're desperate.

Good thing the Kakai's did really well this year to make up for the slackers!

[pierre]

Same experience here from Liseed naked pumpkin. 30% are not naked and pumpkins are snell roting. Add low seed production :-(.

One thing learned: you can get hulled seeds from a naked one...

And the seeds I hand polinated are all suspect as I did not self so do not know if pollen was from a true naked seed plant :-(((

[canadamike]

I am only aiming at seed production. The thin papery coat some have should not be a big problem I think. With a little roasting, which is in order anyway, it should leave the seeds alone with just a little shaking...

[ilex]

Feb 11, 2010 0:01:42 GMT -5 canadamike said:

Speaking of unintended results, I have 2 accessions of melons from Asia ( a STAN country, too tired to remember tonight ) that have embedded seeds ( in the flesh).

I have been desperately scratching my head to find something positive about that characteristic Anybody more creative than me that can see why they are worth working with them???

Used inmature as cucumbers? If they don't have a seed cavity, even if filled like cucumbers, that could be interesting in cooked dishes. All the melon would have the same consistency.

[12540dumont]

Harvesting Kakai today. Mike, I'd love to have a few of each of the 13 varieties that turned out to be naked.

I still have 2 wild cards out in the field. Some little green seed from Long Island and something I'm calling Naked Leo (after my beautiful spouse). Last year I planted Kakai right next to Winter Luxury and saved the seeds of the Kakai. I suppose if they come out okay, I should call them Naked Winter, so my spouse doesn't suffer from being spoken about on forums.

The naked seed pumpkins are very popular with my CSA. They carve them for Halloween and eat the seeds. Even the chickens think the flesh is nasty, so really this is the only inedible squash I grow. So Raymundo, if you have any luck with your cross, don't forget me.

We love the seeds all year. I make pesto with them. Next year I'm planning on putting all the nakeds in a separate room (the front garden) so they can have some privacy.

Attachments:

[steev]

Very pretty green stripies.

[atash]

My Sweetnuts are performing poorly. They had a good start in a good spot with rich soil but grew sluggishly in this year's freakishly cool weather, and I suspect it's naturally a poor pollinator, the flowers being buried under the foliage. Now the plants are going badly senescent before the one and only fruit that took is ripe. Got to keep them alive into October. Hopefully I will get at least 1 fruit from 6 plants in my back yard. I will probably get some on the farm but those might be cross-pollinated with Triple Treat, which are growing nearby.

Whatever seed I get I will keep growing out. One I will keep pure, the other I will allow to hybridize, selecting both for biggest seeds and best fruit.

[raymondo]

If I have the space, and I should the way things are going, I'll be growing some of my F2 (Lady Godiva x Thelma Sanders Sweet Potato). Unfortunately, it will only be enough space for 10 plants at best and I should be growing a lot more. Never mind, I have the rest of my life to work on this!

[atash]

If you can squeeze at least one in Raymondo get some from me (subject to harvest--this will be nip and tuck...). There are reputedly about 6 genes involved in hull-lessness, which is why it is so hard to transfer the trait. It might help if you keep back-crossing to a variety with most of the right genes set. Especially if you can't grow out thousands of seeds to find the ones that segregate right. That's my problem too--though ultimately I do have the space if everything goes smoothly next year.

[raymondo]

atash, I'm sure I could squeeze at least one more in.

I have been thinking about adding some other genes. Since I'm after a fruit with good flesh I think I'll cross back into a good eating pepo. I know that will make naked seededness harder to find but having better quality flesh means that I will at least be able eat the produce while searching.