Post by troppo on Jul 16, 2017 18:43:12 GMT -5
Hi everyone,
So I've been lurking around this forum for awhile now and have started to undertake a few breeding projects and figured I may as well start a thread. Mainly aiming to improve or increase the environmental adaption of certain varieties. One of my projects is improving spaghetti squash. It seems to me that good ol' spag squash has a bit of a cult following attributed by its unique flesh characteristics, although there are others that don't seem to care for it. Myself personally I quite like it but it'll never replace a good ravioli or tortellini. Whilst I enjoy it, I believe there is room for improvement by increasing its flesh colour (nutritional value) and imparting some form of PM tolerance, possibly also making it look more attractive to. So a breeding project started.
The details are pretty simple. We are pretty limited here in Oz, so I searched the net for a nice orange fleshed C.pepo variety to use and settled on Winter Luxury (a nice pie pumpkin). Over spring I planted a couple of SS plants and also a WL plant to act as my male pollinator. Due to the excessive heat wave over xmas all bar one of my cross pollination's failed. Middle of Feb I harvested that one fruit and kept the seed. Although late in the season, we get warm weather up till roughly ANZAC day (25th April) so I planted out some F1 seeds. Out of 20 seeds, after the first week I selected the 10 quickest germinating and after the second week I selected the 4 most vigorous growing plants. With the milder conditions the plants flowered like crazy and I managed to get 7 F1 fruit (all selfed) all in varying stages of maturity which should provide me with enough seed to do some F2 selections this coming spring.
One thing I have noted about this F1 is the change in the foliage of the plants. Whilst regular SS has plain leaves this cross has mottled patterns on the older leaves whilst the newer leaves are silver (note that I have checked and its definitely not disease). Also regular SS has plain skinned fruit with no pattern whereas these F1's have mottled patterns and are currently bigger than SS gets.
Decided to harvest the rest of the F1 fruit at the end of May. Whilst not as big as the first one (3.5kg) they are still pretty decent (ranging from 1.2kg to 2.4kg). All up I have harvested 5 F1 fruit from 3 vines with 2 other fruit succumbing to dry conditions whilst I was away over Easter. The smallest 2 were about the size that I'd like to select for in the F2 stage. I cracked open the large first fruit and discovered it doesn't have the orange flesh (from its Father) that I was after but it had kept the spag flesh trait (from its Mother), but that was expected as it is only an F1 at this stage and the F2 stage is when the magic happens. Will be selecting for orange spag flesh and smaller/single-2 person sized fruit next generation.
At the moment I am undertaking some land prep to hopefully get my squash in at the end of August and get some F2 fruit. I am aiming for only about 20 F2 plants as I am pretty space limited.
So I've been lurking around this forum for awhile now and have started to undertake a few breeding projects and figured I may as well start a thread. Mainly aiming to improve or increase the environmental adaption of certain varieties. One of my projects is improving spaghetti squash. It seems to me that good ol' spag squash has a bit of a cult following attributed by its unique flesh characteristics, although there are others that don't seem to care for it. Myself personally I quite like it but it'll never replace a good ravioli or tortellini. Whilst I enjoy it, I believe there is room for improvement by increasing its flesh colour (nutritional value) and imparting some form of PM tolerance, possibly also making it look more attractive to. So a breeding project started.
The details are pretty simple. We are pretty limited here in Oz, so I searched the net for a nice orange fleshed C.pepo variety to use and settled on Winter Luxury (a nice pie pumpkin). Over spring I planted a couple of SS plants and also a WL plant to act as my male pollinator. Due to the excessive heat wave over xmas all bar one of my cross pollination's failed. Middle of Feb I harvested that one fruit and kept the seed. Although late in the season, we get warm weather up till roughly ANZAC day (25th April) so I planted out some F1 seeds. Out of 20 seeds, after the first week I selected the 10 quickest germinating and after the second week I selected the 4 most vigorous growing plants. With the milder conditions the plants flowered like crazy and I managed to get 7 F1 fruit (all selfed) all in varying stages of maturity which should provide me with enough seed to do some F2 selections this coming spring.
One thing I have noted about this F1 is the change in the foliage of the plants. Whilst regular SS has plain leaves this cross has mottled patterns on the older leaves whilst the newer leaves are silver (note that I have checked and its definitely not disease). Also regular SS has plain skinned fruit with no pattern whereas these F1's have mottled patterns and are currently bigger than SS gets.
Decided to harvest the rest of the F1 fruit at the end of May. Whilst not as big as the first one (3.5kg) they are still pretty decent (ranging from 1.2kg to 2.4kg). All up I have harvested 5 F1 fruit from 3 vines with 2 other fruit succumbing to dry conditions whilst I was away over Easter. The smallest 2 were about the size that I'd like to select for in the F2 stage. I cracked open the large first fruit and discovered it doesn't have the orange flesh (from its Father) that I was after but it had kept the spag flesh trait (from its Mother), but that was expected as it is only an F1 at this stage and the F2 stage is when the magic happens. Will be selecting for orange spag flesh and smaller/single-2 person sized fruit next generation.
At the moment I am undertaking some land prep to hopefully get my squash in at the end of August and get some F2 fruit. I am aiming for only about 20 F2 plants as I am pretty space limited.
