fistulosum x cepa: trying this hybrid HI 08527

[lieven]

I'm growing this hybrid for the first time: I bought the seeds here & you'll find a good pic there too. Taste is ok; very uniform plants indeed. Has anyone heard of this HI 08527?

I'm planning to save seeds from this one in 2014.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

I guess that this variety has about the same traits as "Egyptian Onions" which are a fistulosum x cepa hybrid. I expect it to be functionally sterile. I suppose that it will produce bulbils that can be replanted. And I'd expect it to be perennial.

[raymondo]

Looks interesting Lieven. I've not heard of it before. Do these two species cross easily? I guess at least two cultivars do otherwise they wouldn't be able to produce commercial quantities of seeds. I guess too, and for the same reason, that one of the parents must have been male sterile. It will be interesting to see what happens at flowering time. Please keep us posted.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Ray: Thanks for mentioning that. I agree. Modern onion hybrids are typically made using a mother with cytoplasmic male sterility. So descendants will likewise be male sterile, and any successful seed production would require pollen from a non-hybrid variety which is not male sterile.

Onions are a unique case in which the sterility is due to an interaction between the nuclear DNA and the organelle DNA, so with the right pollen donor it is possible to reverse the sterility (Mendelian inheritance applies at that point).

This is an inter-species cross, so that has it's own set of complications: They might be too far apart genetically to produce viable offspring even if a non-hybrid pollen donor can be found that flowers at the same time.

[Al]

I see this onion is available from U.K. seed catalogue D. T. Brown under the name Matrix (previously HI 08 527). No mention of it being a hybrid.
I think give it a try, it looks better than pure fistulosum strains. I think somebody reported that it will multiply if kept beyond the first season. I do like vigorous clump forming onions which can be easily propagated by division.
The details of the genetics are a bit beyond me, but I like to think that I might get some interesting crosses if I encourage cross fertilization & collect seed. I will have quite a few allium cepa & fistulosum in the onion patch next year.

[nicollas]

Available in France too : www.graines-baumaux.fr/139815-ciboule-f1-matrix.html

Said to be "intermediary type" and F1 but no info on any interspecific cross