Found a cross in Brown Trout

[raymondo]

Summer is our wet season so I harvest as I can and bring them in to dry, usually just the pods though.

[oxbowfarm]

I think rain during the harvest period is the big challenge for growing dry beans and grains in the Pacific Northwest. Right around September/October they start getting really wet again.

[oxbowfarm]

Have just finally gotten around to shelling out the beans from this years grow-out of the F2 seeds. I had 10 of the 12 seeds germinate but I only had 8 plants when harvest time came. There were three bush plants and 5 climbing plants. In the picture the bush plants are on the left.

After seeing this F3 seed, I'm pretty convinced the other parent was Dolloff. Many of the seeds are showing similar shapes to Dolloff, and three of them are very close pink/yellow colors to Dolloff. Johnson is a much rounder and dark red bean, it just seems more likely that Dollof is the source of the light pink /yellow genetics.

Only one of the plants had seed showing the white mottled pattern from Brown Trout, but that one gave a very impressive yield with a very branched climbing plant with large. long, flattened seeds, almost like kidney beans.

[steev]

Nice bags of seed, whatever they are; that's about the quantity where I feel successful.

[ferdzy]

I had a cross show up in my Dolloff beans this year as well. I'm pretty sure the father was Cherokee Trail of Tears. The beans are a little smaller and rounder than Dolloff, but still with that cut-off blockiness and some mottling. I had three plants with the crossed beans, and got 2 cups of shelled dried beans from them, which I think is pretty good. They took about a week longer than the Dolloff to dry, but that's way faster than the CToT. I have enough to replant and see what happens as well as enough to eat and see how they taste. I'm kind of excited about this. Think I will have to cook them up soon.

Interesting to see yours segregating out so much.

[oxbowfarm]

Yes it is fun to just look at them and see what is happening.

It seems clear that the horticultural/pinto pattern is dominant over the color splotches on white pattern of beans like Brown Trout, Jacob's Cattle, Anasazi etc. I expect to see more of the white splotching as they continue to segregate in the further generations.

They are also segregating considerably around seed shape. Most of them are flattened like Dolloff, so that seem to be a strong trait, but the profile is all over the place as is size. Many of the pale, Dolloff-colored beans are actually much smaller than either parent. The super-productive pole bean with the white splotchin under the brown mottle is actually a bit larger than either parent. I will try and take a photo of the beans. I don't have a great track record doing close-up detail pics of beans.

[oxbowfarm]

Here are the bush segregates below the two parent varieties. I'm pretty convinced Dolloff is the father.

[oxbowfarm]

Here are three of the pole/indeterminate segregates.

[oxbowfarm]

And here are the last two pole/indeterminates. I'm pretty excited about both of these. They were both very productive, huge plants. The dark one is the only segregate showing the white splotch pattern from Brown Trout. It is interesting because the pattern seems to be color splashed over white, but the color clearly doesn't need to be solid as you see here, the colored areas are pinto/horticultural pattern. Really intersting. I'm also excited about the size of the dark bean, it is larger than either parent. Both of these gave me nearly a pint of seed from a single seed planted. May be some hybrid vigor at work.