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Cortona Toscana Italy

following the trak of the last tread about selecting, crossin, selfing , sibilling and cloning,
that's my idea about someting to do in big way to refine the a.g. variety
(i can do this by myself because i've not enough land )
having the seeds coming from the right cros from the "monster clones" we have a lot of possibilityes to have god genetic but also bad seeds;
my idea about i ask your comments are to plant a lot of seeds and plant it like usual pumpkins plants no overfeding, no overwatering just let just one fruit per plant! the plants that produce the bigger fruit are the plants that cloned and replanted next year can produce biggest fruits
with this sistem we can reduce at the minimum level the necessity of time and land and massimize the numbers!
because one of the problem on a.g. breeding are the diference of growing condition so give to all the plants the same condition just the best can emerge and be selected for next generation!
let me know what you think about!
greahings
Emanuele

11/26/2009 6:05:32 PM

Las Cruces NM

The problem all AG growers have is space -- they require a lot of space -- your with all of us there. Even in the same garden, there can be deltas, but probably as close as you can get to homogenious. Cloning in AG is still an experiment at this point. But in theory if a plant produced a big one, a clone, since it has the same genetics, should be equally able to produce a big one. The ccloning experiments should draw this out. Either way the genes are there, so crossing is the ultimate experiment and offer greater chance of improved genetics. So Yes.

11/26/2009 8:31:12 PM

Eastern Washington State

This minimal space approach might work if you are doing a 'first cut' from a wide cross. Or selecting for disease resistance that is being backcrossed into top material.

However a lot of the people here are already using top seed from a narrow genetic base under ideal conditions. To improve on that you need to test in that sort of environment. In a minimal environment such as you describe, I'm not certain one can identify those lines that can really perform given near-perfect growing conditions.

11/27/2009 12:19:15 PM