Dolloff X Cherokee Trail of Tears

[ferdzy]

I was finally able to harvest my grow-out of crossed seed (Dolloff x Cherokee Trail of Tears) from last year. Last year, the cross showed up as plump round black seeds, speckled with dark brown, with up to 9 ( I think?) seeds per pod.

I planted them July 1st or thereabouts (very late). At that point the weather turned cool and rainy, and has been so every since. In spite of this they were tied for first to dry out, along with their parent Dolloff. I did not grow any CToT this year, but when I planted them late a couple years back they did not produce a single ripe bean. The f2 plants were extremely consistant in terms of length of vine, shape and colour of leaves, and number and shape of pods per plant. Only the fact that some had white and some had pink flowers showed any variety. The f2 pods were much shorter than the f1 pods, and the beans were smaller and flatter. I don't know how much that has to do with their rotten growing conditions. So, when I picked the beans and sorted them out, I was surprised by how much variation there was in bean colour. Not in shape; they have lost the roundness the f1 had from CToT and almost every one was the shape of Dolloff.

f2 offspring of Dolloff x Cherokee Trail of Tears

Black, with or without brown speckles was most common, but there were also several variations of black or brown speckles over a white to tan background (all put together in one jar), plain solid browns in shades of caramel to very dark brown (also in one jar), and whites. The whites were noticeably poor producers compared to the others, and show a lot of disease damage as well. True; the others show it less, but I think they also have it less.

So this is all very interesting but somehow not quite what I was expecting! Any ideas on what will happen if I continue to grow some of these out?

[oxbowfarm]

Based on my own Dolloff cross grow-out, they will continue to segregate into different variations of color and seed shape. This is more noticeable when you are growing out the lines that have dominant traits like the pure black. I would expect other colors to continue to pop up in the black lines for a few generations as hidden recessives shake out. With the seed shape, it isn't clear to me what shapes are dominant, or if any dominance occurs for seed shape as I see less variation within lines for seed shape, just variability that seems to stabilize. But I don't have any literature or hard data to back that up.

What I have seen in my own stuff is that the mottled horticultural pattern is dominant over solid brown and white pattern of Brown Trout. In following generations the white is beginning to show up in some segregations, but solid patterning of any color other than white has only shown up in a tiny minority of the F4 seeds.

The fly in the ointment is the question of how much cross pollination is occurring within the segregants since I plant them mostly together in a block. So some of the variations I am seeing are possibly the result of re-combinations. The more different beans I grow the more I realize how much common bean cross pollinates in my micro-ecosystem. I used to believe it didn't happen that much for me. The more I look the more crosses I see.

[ferdzy]

Okay. Hmm, have to decide how interesting it actually is to pursue these, versus alloting space to some new-to-me bean, for which there is a long list of potential candidates. I was hoping *somebody* would have the shape, size, and volumne of the f1, but so far not looking good.

I'm pretty sure I'm not getting much cross pollination here... but who knows; I too may start to recognize more subtle crosses over the next seasons.