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Post by jondear on Nov 7, 2014 12:53:45 GMT -5
I hit the quote button and delete or backspace what I don't want. It may be different from a PC. |
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Post by Carol Deppe on Nov 7, 2014 14:39:09 GMT -5
[anybody got a line on some orange endosperm maize?][/quote]
'Byron Flint' has a lovely orange flint color. That's one reason I used it (along with Abenaki/Roy's Calais) as a parent in 'Cascade Ruby-Gold Flint'. 'Abenaki' has a pale yellow endosperm. This means that in the yellow ears, you get pale unattractive yellow. So I worked hard to incorporate the endosperm color from 'Byron'. CRG isn't pure for the orange endosperm, though. But there is enough of it so that there are plenty of rich yellow instead of pale yellow ears. And the cornmeal is a deeper orange color with red flecks than is Abenaki. I got 'Byron' from the Seed Saver's Exchange. (Will Bonsall/Scatterseed Project).
'Longfellow' flint also has a nice orange endosperm color. Bakers Creek sells the seed.
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Post by nicollas on Nov 8, 2014 2:15:16 GMT -5
To quote different parts, you can click to "Reply" (top right of the Quick Reply box), and then you can insert quotations from the icon on the right (next to the smiley icon), and then past text in this quotation box. Previous thread messages are at the bottom of the page so it is convenient to get the text you want to quote from there.
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Post by philagardener on Dec 21, 2014 20:51:20 GMT -5
Re the bitter gene problem. I have not ever had a problem with it, so I asked Jim Myers, the vegetable breeder at Oregon State University about it. He says it's a dominant in the pepos that can come in from gourds. It's not a problem with the other species because we don't grow wild or bitter-carrying versions of those. While the bitterness gene is dominant, you can't taste it until you have fruit, and the plant has been busy contributing pollen to the rest of the patch for a while before you have fruit. And in winter squash, since you don't taste those until after the season, if you caught a bitter plant it would have been spreading that gene throughout your patch all season. So even on a home scale it's not necessarily easy to get rid of the bitter gene. Joseph's method of tasting every fruit, culling all off-type plants, then removing all preexisting fruits is just what it would take to do the job. Here is an interesting approach to screening for bitterness in cucumbers ( C. sativa): link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00022084 (unfortunately, this 1959 text still is behind a paywall), and a follow up 2012 study available at cuke.hort.ncsu.edu/cucurbit/wehner/articles/art151.pdfApparently one can non-destructively screen for the common dominant bitterness gene in cucumbers by simply tasting a piece of a seedling cotyledon. That would let one eliminate bitter genes well before the plants flower. Has anyone tried to screen squash seedlings this way? |
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Post by nicollas on Dec 22, 2014 2:48:27 GMT -5
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Dec 22, 2014 9:16:01 GMT -5
Great discussion about selecting for non-bitter cucumbers at the seedling stage. Thanks. I suppose that this summer I get to taste a LOT of cucumber poison.
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Post by 12540dumont on Dec 22, 2014 17:54:11 GMT -5
Carol, I really liked you Candystick Delicata. However the last 2 years the squash bugs have been so bad, that the only thing that survived was spaghetti squash and Yellow Joe (a zuke from Joseph). I'm ruthless in the cukes. If I taste bitter, the whole plant goes and if I keep finding bitter in and around it, I'll chuck the whole patch and start again. I tried crossing my Poona Keera with a White Wonder and I got something useless. Virtually no cukes, and not great taste. Looked like a brown white wonder. So, I tossed this experiment and will go back to planting both of these on different parts of the farm so I can save seeds. In my garden I can plant corn side by side on the windward side and only the two rows next to each other will cross. So in my garden this sort of looks like this Wind blowing down this page 10 rows of black corn - 10 rows of yellow corn Row 9 of black and row 1 of yellow cross. There's no other crossing in any row. I've repeated this enough so that I know not to do the following: Wind blows down page 10 rows of black 10 rows of yellow I get crossing in virtually every row, with row 2 of black and row 9 of yellow showing the least about of crossing. www.sciencenews.org/article/darwin-reluctant-mathematician interesting short article about Darwin and hybrid vigor. I still would like an answer to why if I get 25 seeds from Dar, and 25 Seeds from Joseph, and another 25 from my own garden, and they're all the same variety...why it is that when I save the seed from this crop the following year they act more like hybrids, being taller and more robust? |
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Post by philagardener on Dec 22, 2014 19:54:41 GMT -5
I still would like an answer to why if I get 25 seeds from Dar, and 25 Seeds from Joseph, and another 25 from my own garden, and they're all the same variety...why it is that when I save the seed from this crop the following year they act more like hybrids, being taller and more robust? Maybe you are seeing a kind of hybrid vigor because each 25 was no longer the exact same gene pool. (Inbreeding depression? Genetic drift? A bit of out-crossing in different populations?) For similar reasons if I get seed for an "heirloom" variety and it doesn't grow well for me, I'm always glad to give it a second try with seed from another source. |
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Post by 12540dumont on Dec 24, 2014 17:57:51 GMT -5
Well, I guess that must be it!
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