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maine USA

My son grew an AG, which he crossed with itself, I can't remember the name of the pumpkin that the seed came from, but it from a good one. My question is has anyone gotten good results from selfing? AKA inbreeding. Any reading that I have done on this with other plants suggest that selfing can bring out desired traits, but for some reason tends to bring out a lot of flaws. Nothing in life seems to be cut and dry! thanks Kathy T

10/13/2005 12:00:48 PM

Netherlands

Many growers do a lot of selfing. People like Steve Zuhlke and Owen Olsen do it a lot. Owen just broke the European squash record on a 471 Beachy x self.

10/13/2005 12:20:51 PM

selfing a plant promotes homozygousity... bringing out consistent good traits and bad traits breed true. there's nothing wrong with it, but you can use selfing to isolate traits that you want. of course this only works if the traits are genotypically homozygous.

10/13/2005 12:38:21 PM

Menomonie, WI (mail@gr8pumpkin.net)

Brigitte everything after Selfing a plant...came out blah blah blah. We need 8th grade biology terms. :)

10/13/2005 1:13:20 PM

Eastern Pennsylvania

yes Brigitte you are correct except to keep in mind that we only observe the phenotype of the plant, while the actual genotype remains unknown.

Shannon, just be glad we're not acknowledging the concept of multiple alleles!!

I don't think we talked about punnett squares/ genetic variance in 8th grade but if somebody wants to get into it just post. But the more simple the explaination is, the more words it will take up...

10/13/2005 3:04:30 PM

Pumpkintown, SC

Read My Lips:
Homozygosity Baaad
Heterozygosity Goood <:^)>

10/13/2005 5:08:16 PM

Utah

Brian could you please expand on your post.

10/14/2005 8:51:49 AM

Eastern Pennsylvania

Snake... what are you talking about?

Orangeness seems to be a recessive trait in the world of huge AG's these days. if you want an "orange" trait and you have a pumpkin plant that is homozygous recessive for "orange" aka <o,o> then what is the problem exactly? keeping in mind, we're not talking about the whole gene pool of AG's, just in the context of selfing a single plant to increase the likelyhood of orange fruit.

For the record, as far as crossing is concerned, I'd be much more inclined to go with a xsibb than xself. -Jim

10/14/2005 3:02:41 PM

Pumpkintown, SC

It was a "Republican" joke. Ya know, Bush Sr.
Just playing off your simple explanation.
For the record, truth be known, I like growing and making sib crosses. My biggest this year was a sib cross, BF

10/14/2005 9:52:35 PM

Follansbee, Wv

Don't worry Snake, I got it...and thought it was pretty funny :)

But this selfing thing now...I selfed the 1367.5. Since the 1367.5 was, what 40-50% green, and my 1095 was 80-90% green what are the odds the seeds from the 1095 will throw all green?

10/16/2005 8:30:20 AM

Long Island,New York

If I might chime in.....As for true green I'd say pretty slim. As for turning green near the end there's no end to the 723/845's late season greening up.The 935Lloyd greens up all the time...the 865Mettler was one of those wispering controversial fruits when the GPC was doing the 35% rule. I also have notes that say Jerry's 845 was a greenie but Im not sure that was the 845 he used as a pollinator. The 935lloyd x self has thrown out true green squash (832Bruce progeny and 547Kournikakis progeny as examples)and the 845 and 845 x sibbs are a greenie threat.So, definitely a chance at true green, but I say very slim. If you came to contest with a late season greening 1095 I would certainly want to see a day 30 picture for the "true green" classification. I hope this doesn't cut off Snake's response...its just that I've looked at the 1367.5 for green a bit......g

10/16/2005 8:59:49 AM