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Picton,ON (j.vincent@xplornet.ca)

I had a good chat with Gary Miller in Niagara (over several brown pops) about using multiple males for pollinating one female. Gary suggests that this practice contributes to more genetic variation with the seeds from a given pumpkin. Gary believes that each male flower on a plant provides a slighlty different set of genetics and that all the pollen in a single flower is basicly the same.
I think most of us are using the multiple male method to increase the chances of getting a good pollination, but Gary suggests that this contributes to more variation in the offspring.
Gary says that the 846 Calai was a very consistant producing seed and one of the main reasons for this is that Fred Calai used only one male flower to pollinate that female. (Gary, I hope you don't mine me quoting you)
I thought I would post this for discussion purposes.

6/18/2008 4:47:12 PM

Rhode Island

its quite possible if trying to have all seeds produce like results of color,shape and size, that gary is correct.

then again, our 1068 wallace from 2003 and several other very good wallace crosses (and others growers pumpkins as well )over the last few years, were pollinated with the multiple males from the same plant method.

yes this may be why there is variation in size and color. but whos complaining when its been proven that the top seeds in the world were pollinated with multiple males, and has proven to grow huge offspring of various sizes?

also using only one male can be tricky if the male is not loaded with pollen.

i believe there is strength in numbers

6/18/2008 6:39:29 PM

Minnesota(dw447@fastmail.fm)

John and Pap,
Interesting observations. I'd like to hear of other well grown out seeds that had just one male as a pollinator....to see if they tend to throw progeny that are more consistantly alike, than those pollinated with multiple males from the same plant.

6/18/2008 8:06:21 PM

Minnesota(dw447@fastmail.fm)

I just went to the AGGC to see pic of the 846 Calai progeny. There looks to be quite a bit of variation in color of the 846 offspring. Some go quite heavy to the chart, some go light. I'm wondering if the one male= more consistant offspring thoery is correct. I don't think I see any more uniformity in the 846's offspring, than in the 1068 Wallace's(which as pap stated, was pollinated by multiple males).

6/18/2008 8:18:48 PM

Indiana

I'm sorry, but I have to disagree with the more males causing more variability.

1 pollen grain=1 seed

If any of you have children. Unless there are identical twins, they are not going to look identical. All of your children are different. Depending on the genes of the parents, some will be consistently similar in some traits, and not in others.

One way to decrease variability is to have 2 distinct races mix. To apply this to people, if you have an Asian Parent and a Anglo parent, the children will look remarkably similar if they are the same sex. This is kind of like hybrid vigor. Hybrids are known for their consistent passing of very similar characteristics.

It is very unlikely that multiple males would add to variability. The only way it is possible is if a vine tip mutates, and the plant DNA actually changes.

The bottom line is if your good at pollinating, you do not need more than 1 male, but many of us like the added cushion. If you have a couple males, you will not increase the variability of your seed.

6/18/2008 10:27:55 PM

Rhode Island

oh tom you old poopie pants lol

6/19/2008 11:46:44 AM

Utah

I remember this question being asked before...
ditto to what Tom B said. and..

Each male has how many pollen grains? 10,000? something like that. (who knows for sure - but there is a lot of them) You are going to get all the variablity that there is in one flower- adding a 2nd or 5th or 10th won't make any difference.

6/19/2008 10:35:17 PM

Ohio

I started to use one male flower as a pollinator a couple years ago because of what Poopy pants ,,,I mean Tom, just posted about.

6/27/2008 5:28:30 PM

Colorado

I see the world the way tom B. sees it-so he must be right... lol

7/1/2008 12:56:32 AM

Picton,ON (j.vincent@xplornet.ca)

Thats good to know Tom, so the variability is not effected by using multiples. I would note, since I started using multiple males, I have been getting much better seed counts. This is likley a result from simpley more volume of pollen.

7/2/2008 12:29:16 PM