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Hudsonville, Michigan (michiganpumpkins@sbcglobal.net)

Does color tend be more influenced by the pollinator or the mother plant? i.e. If you were trying to combine heavy and color, would you cross heavy x color (i.e. 805 x 869)? OR color x heavy (i.e.869x805)? Which would yield better color? Of course, there are plenty of good SOLID color genes available, but I see many are making these heavy x color crosses, which is in my mind a crapshoot whether they will yield decent color. Just wondering if anyone has noticed a tendency for color to be more influenced by mother or pollinator...

Frank

1/20/2005 7:17:19 AM

Ljubljana, Slovenia

Bellow are some theoretical considerations on this question (copied from recent “genetics breeding” thread). I have no practical experience and would appreciate any info on that. Jernej


Female and male in principle each provide half of the genetic information into zygote (fertilized egg cell). However, genetic info is far from enough to support life and all the “rest”: complete cell structure of the female egg cell. Cell organelles are thus inherited only via female. They include mitochondria (organelles for respiration) and proplastids (organelles present only in plants: they develop into photosynthetic chloroplasts and plastids, which accumulate starch or provide orange/yellow color because of accumulation of carotenoids). Btw, these organelles also contain genetic information that is independent of nuclear genes so females in fact provide a little more than 50 % of genes.

Anyway, my point is that mitochondria and chloroplasts are very important for the growth vigor and they are in inherited ONLY via females!... OK, the truth is that a lot of genes responsible for their function are still in the nucleus, where both parents contribute equally…

It seems that plastids called chromoplasts provide color in pumpkins. Interesting... are females therefore more responsible for the color than males because females provide plastids??

An article that is about chromoplasts and cites an example in pumpkins: http://jxb.oupjournals.org/cgi/content/full/51/346/873

1/20/2005 9:02:28 AM

In the shade - PDX, OR

Frank - once again I think this is a crapshoot as to the arrangement of these genes.

If you are looking for heavy X color crosses I'd go with 898 X :
846
801
869.5
Plenty of these out there.

Best example that I saw in '04 was the 1205 LaRue.
Grown from the 1180 Daletas X 708 LaRue.
The 1180 is the 898 X 846 The 708 is 705 Stelts X 846.
The 1205 was beautiful for both shape and color.

I'll probably get shot but I still think that the pollinator influences the color of fruit of the current generation.

1/20/2005 1:00:34 PM

Syracuse, NY

here's my own perfect example:
the Gerry 728.5 (845 Bobier '00 uow X 1140 Stelts)

the 728.5 was a creme-colored fruit, and the 1140
produced really-orange beauties, 300, 301, 341 (all est. wt.) and the biggest, on the main, was officially 531 pounds. no wonder i like the 1140 so much! i sold the
531, unfortunately...

the seeds from the 728.5 (seed supply is super, super low)
and the 300 (also very low) each grow really nice orange fruit;
the PBs of the 300 are 562.5 Vogel, 508 Gerry and 307 Gerry,
and the 728.5 produced the 786.4 Catapano and the 735 Drake and the 713 Matto, each of them excellently orange.

so the color of the offspring is MAJORLY influenced by the
male pollinator (1140) in the case of the 728.5.
as i have said before, 'pollinate big and ugly with orange and lovely'...it has worked so far. since the 1140 was orange the offspring has been orange, and their offspring as well; however the 728.5 has not been proven beyond 786.4, and judging by the grower of it, it may have reached its potential...we'll see!
so, yeah, i would say that 805 X 869.5 would most-likely produce orange offspring...and heavy ones at that! g'luck!!

1/25/2005 4:13:50 PM

Syracuse, NY

i forgot to mention that the 300's cross is 1140 X 845.
which ties-in with the comment about the 1140 and its offspring and also THAT'S offspring having all been orange.
i guess if you cross the 869.5 with the 805,
(869.5 X 805), then we can see what THAT outcome is as well.

1/25/2005 4:18:25 PM

Hudsonville, Michigan (michiganpumpkins@sbcglobal.net)

Eric: I see what you mean about the "pollinate big and ugly with orange and lovely" statement. Now that I think it through, there are many examples of orange producing seed where the color came from the pollinator. Some very prominent examples (801, 869) had strong color come in from the male, but those orange traits were only consistently exhibited in offspring because there was an unexpressed (or partially expressed) color gene already present in the female. So to follow through my example, 805 x 869 is a questionable color cross, since 805 is thoroughly cream for several generations. But a 1051 Lewis x 869, or 882 Cheam x 869, now those would be good color crosses in my book. (1051=869x805) (882=1051x805)
Thus the 869 pollinator could pass the color gene to seed that already has some 869 color recessive in it....
Just thinking out loud here...
Frank

1/28/2005 7:53:00 AM