Post by oxbowfarm on Oct 2, 2015 9:08:56 GMT -5
Went to a variety trial tasting for the NOVIC (Northern Vegetable Improvement Collaborative) project yesterday and got a lot of interesting information.
They are doing some interesting breeding work in the organic vegetable breeding program with cucumbers and downy mildew. Apparently the reason downy mildew has become so severe in the past few years is that a new strain developed that overcomes the previously existing resistance that most commercial cucumber varieties had bred into them. So downy mildew has become a much more severe disease since 2004 or so. I always lose my cucumbers by mid-August, but had not attributed it to DM before. They have developed a number of really good tasting slicing cukes that are in the F5 stage, I'm hoping to be on the list to get a small sample to trial next year. But some interesting info for the folks here is that they found the resistances they are using in some common commercially available heirloomish OP varieties. Suyo Long which is an asian type cucumber that is commonly available from a bunch of sources. The other ones, which are more prominent in the pedigree of the lines they are breeding right now, are Ivory Queen and Marketmore 97. Ivory Queen is available from Cooks Garden, MM 97 is available from a couple of places. So if Downy Mildew is wrecking your cucumbers you might try a couple of those or grexing them Joseph Lofthouse-style.
The other interesting cucurbit tidbit I picked up was they testing they had done on striped cucumber beetle feeding preferences in squash, and specifically pepos. It appears that striped cucumber beetles overwhelmingly prefer squash from C. pepo ssp pepo vs C. pepo ssp texana. The texana subspecies is the one from the North American center of domestication vs pepo which is Central American. Jack pumpkins and zucchini are the most common market classes of subspecies pepo. Pattypans, crookneck and straight neck, acorns, and delicatas are subspecies texana.
They also found that C. maxima is overwhelmingly preferred as a host by striped cucumber beetle than all other Cucurbita species. They actually use rows of maxima as a trap crop at the Cornell farm, then hit them with a flame weeder! He only recommended using maxima as a trap crop if you WERE planning to do the flame weeding thing because otherwise you will just increase your total beetle population over time.
They are doing some interesting breeding work in the organic vegetable breeding program with cucumbers and downy mildew. Apparently the reason downy mildew has become so severe in the past few years is that a new strain developed that overcomes the previously existing resistance that most commercial cucumber varieties had bred into them. So downy mildew has become a much more severe disease since 2004 or so. I always lose my cucumbers by mid-August, but had not attributed it to DM before. They have developed a number of really good tasting slicing cukes that are in the F5 stage, I'm hoping to be on the list to get a small sample to trial next year. But some interesting info for the folks here is that they found the resistances they are using in some common commercially available heirloomish OP varieties. Suyo Long which is an asian type cucumber that is commonly available from a bunch of sources. The other ones, which are more prominent in the pedigree of the lines they are breeding right now, are Ivory Queen and Marketmore 97. Ivory Queen is available from Cooks Garden, MM 97 is available from a couple of places. So if Downy Mildew is wrecking your cucumbers you might try a couple of those or grexing them Joseph Lofthouse-style.
The other interesting cucurbit tidbit I picked up was they testing they had done on striped cucumber beetle feeding preferences in squash, and specifically pepos. It appears that striped cucumber beetles overwhelmingly prefer squash from C. pepo ssp pepo vs C. pepo ssp texana. The texana subspecies is the one from the North American center of domestication vs pepo which is Central American. Jack pumpkins and zucchini are the most common market classes of subspecies pepo. Pattypans, crookneck and straight neck, acorns, and delicatas are subspecies texana.
They also found that C. maxima is overwhelmingly preferred as a host by striped cucumber beetle than all other Cucurbita species. They actually use rows of maxima as a trap crop at the Cornell farm, then hit them with a flame weeder! He only recommended using maxima as a trap crop if you WERE planning to do the flame weeding thing because otherwise you will just increase your total beetle population over time.
