Jostaberry seedling

[whwoz]

Thanks for the info toomanyirons, really limits the possibility of re-creating it with out access to appropriate facilities and I do not want to be handling colchicine - very nasty stuff, but a highly effective mutagen. From what little I know of Jostaberries, I suspect that they need a lot of chill time to properly set fruit. Last year when we had a couple of minus 7oC (about 20F) frosts we got the best set we have had in over 7 years of growing them (but still only a handfull). We normally get down to minus 3C (27F) we we get very few set on bushes that are 3 feet high. They do a lot better in Tasmania than over here.

Woz

[raymondo]

I hadn’t realised that the jostaberry was a teraploid. Sexual reproduction then should produce some quite diverse offspring, perhaps even one that sets a decent amount of fruit. The jostaberry I have, the parent of the seedling, sets very few fruit indeed, two, sometimes three per bush. I have the space though not necessarily the right microclimate for them. They probably need more shade than there is. I’m working on that but trees take time. The farm, when we bought it, was 40 bare acres. Just a lone tree almost in the dead centre.

[steev]

Yeah, my twenty acres had only annual weeds, having been pasture many years; just take-out, no put-back, so utterly inorganic soil, but as toom said, there is much to be said for a clean slate.

[walt]

My (rented) acre was just a pasture.  All tough Brome grass sod, with elm saplings up to 3 inches thick.  Different ecosystems, different rules.

[whwoz]

Aug 5, 2018 15:44:34 GMT -5 raymondo said:

I hadn’t realised that the jostaberry was a teraploid. Sexual reproduction then should produce some quite diverse offspring, perhaps even one that sets a decent amount of fruit. The jostaberry I have, the parent of the seedling, sets very few fruit indeed, two, sometimes three per bush. I have the space though not necessarily the right microclimate for them. They probably need more shade than there is. I’m working on that but trees take time. The farm, when we bought it, was 40 bare acres. Just a lone tree almost in the dead centre.

Raymondo,  Have been thinking about this and how colchicine works, so that even though the Jostaberry is a tetraploid, do not expect to much diversity as mutagens, of which colchicine is the normal one used with plants, are used to create viable plants through the doubling of all chromosomes present.  This allows odd chromosomes to "pair up" where as normally they would be separate and can often be the difference between viable, well growing plants such as we see with Jostaberries and something that is ultimately not viable, but may germinate and grow poorly for a limited span of time before dying.  Strugglers are far more likely to occur in the plant world once we start dealing with complex crosses such as this.  By using colchicine plants breeders increase there chances of a viable plant.

Woz

[raymondo]

Food for thought, thanks whwoz. I suppose though that even if my parent jostaberry were effectively diploid because viability was created through ploidy doubling I would still hope for some variation to occur, unless of course my original plant is capable of apomixis.

[whwoz]

We were looking at our best harvest this year, a marked improvement on any previous crop, checking them daily for taste when we got the first of our 44oC days. No more berries after that and they were just starting to get to a really nice tasting stage