Nicotiana crosses

[jason]

I have a few questions maybe someone can help me with.

First, if more than one Nicotiana strain or species is grown relatively close to another, would it be possible to collect pure seed by bagging a group of flowers and hand pollinating?

If you wanted to cross pollinate what would be the best method? Do the flowers pollinate themselves if left alone? If individual or a group of flowers were bagged and flowers from another plant were used to pollinate them would it amount to hybrid seeds?

I was reading this research article from the 1920s talking about many Nicotiana crosses between species. I thought this was pretty interesting. The majority of hybrid seeds never germinated, but a few did. Does anyone have any experience with crosses between species? The article is here if anyone is interested:

www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1200821

Any ideas or other places to research?

[Alan]

Yes, you can collect pure seed from Nicotiana grown closely together as long as you bag the flowers you plan to collect pure seed from.

The flowers will fairly easily pollinate themselves with a bit of action from the wind, from your hand or from and electric toothbrush. I cross pollinate by emasculating the flower a day or so before it opens on the mother plant, collect some pollen from the father plant and then use a q-tip or tooth brush to pollinate the female plant.

I myself have never done any interspecies crosses, on Nicotiana Tobaccum to Nicotiana Tobaccum though I have heard that Luther Burbank did do some intespecies work with tobacco. I really wish I could answer you question about the fertility of interspecies crosses but I just don't currently have the experience to do so.

[jason]

Hey alan,

Thanks for sharing what you know.

I was reading about how Luther Burbank crossed a nicotiana with a petunia. That's pertty crazy. I guess the plant never flowered, but still cool.

I might experiment with interspecies crosses. Just for fun. Maybe something neat will grow.

If you get a minute can you explain a bit more about 'emasculating' the mother plant?

[Alan]

Basically the idea is to catch the flower a day or two before opening and then remove the outer "cone" from the flower, the Pistol will not yet be sticky but will become so in a day or two, this gives you some time to collect pollen (be sure to cover the pistol with a bag of some type in the meantime) and spread the pollen onto the pistol of the mother plant and then cover the flower over again with a bag until it develops it's seed pod.

Emasculation is actually not required and in fact often causes the plant to abort the cross, the only reason that I used emasculation in the past is due to the fact that is how I cross tomatoes and I didn't yet know better also with emasculation if the cross takes you get 100% hybrid seed. However with tobacco you can actually be a little less methodical and can reliably produce hybrid seed much easier. You can use a q-tip or artist paint brush and plant two different types of nicotiana close together, In the morning when the plants are shedding pollen and before the humidity gets to high(usually betweet 9-11 a.m.) you can go out and suave the insides of the flowers back and forth between varieties, now this isn't exactly going to produce 100% hybrids because there will be some self polinization going on here too, but when you plant the seeds you will immediately notice the hybrid vigor of the crossed seeds and if you don't notice the vigor you will definetly notice the recombinant traits in later developments and you can effectively rouge out the plants you don't like while also taking steps to insure in the F-2 generation you don't get unwanted traits from inferior plants by letting the plants self pollinate and keeping the flowers you save for seed coverd with a paper bag and rubber band.

I hope this clears up the subject a little bit and doesn't come off too awful confusing.

[Alan]

For those who are interested this coming fall and in the early part of '09 when I get the new web-site up and running I'll be offering several kinds of tobacco including open pollinated types, breeding mixes, and new F1 types. Very few people and organizations other than new hope seed company and victory seeds are doing work with these plants so I am going to be devoting a good amount of my time to them this year.

[samyaza]

I grew N. tabacum this year and found it very sensitive, to TMV especially. I'm not a regular smoker but I like the plant and appreciate the quality of products as for vegetables. I was interested in breeding it for better resistance and looked for its wild ancestor.
It seems it's an allotetraploid hybrid of N. sylvestris ( common for ornamental purpose ) and N. tomentosiformis, a species originated from Yungas I couldn't find seeds of anywhere. N. otophora seems to be close related too but an allotetraploid species must have two diploid parents and N. sylvestris x N. tomentosiformis seems to be the closest to N. tabacum.
See the article here.
In addition, there may be an interest in alkaloids as an organic source to kill pests. My grandfather used self-made extract of tobacco in water to get rid of aphids. I know N. rustica must be the highest nicotine content species of all, surely far more potent thant N. tabacum.