From

Location

Message

Date Posted

Ankeny, Iowa

Hi everyone,
It's been a while since I posted anything on here, but I want to start off by saying congratulations to Ron on setting a new record with a 2000+ pound pumpkin! I've been growing giant pumpkins for over 13 years now and never thought I'd see a 1 ton pumpkin.

I also want to talk about the gene pool of our pumpkins. I can recall having a disscussion a number of years back over seeds and "unlocking" unused potential in the breeding and genetics of our pumpkins. I was wondering if anyone out there still has some of the "older" seeds such as the 723 Bobier, 712 Kuhn, 845 Nesbitt etc... that they could cross with some of our new and improved lines that have risen through the ranks over the past few years to produce the bigger and heavier pumpkins that we enjoy today.
I was thinking that crossing these lines may give us a "hybrid" of the old and new generation of giant pumpkins and may lead to even bigger pumpkins in the future. Possibly 3,000 or even 4,000 pounds?
Let me know what you guys think.

Junior

10/3/2012 9:30:23 PM

Colorado

Interesting topic junior.I suspect breeding back 10 years will do the opposite and produce smaller pumpkins.I'm usually wrong.I think the gene pool is too narrow to get hybred vigour.Going back may be a way to lock in some desirable trait such as disease resistence.The weights keep going up with crossing the biggest with the biggest-that seems to be working for now.The only way to try your theory would be to get a large number of growers to sighn on and stick with it for a few years on the chance that it might work.

10/4/2012 12:13:01 PM

Eastern Washington State

I'm going to echo cojoe's sentiments on this one.
I have no data to back this up but I strongly suspect that the genetic base of modern AG pumpkins is pretty narrow (shallow gene pool).

Cojoe this doesn't necessarily rule out heterosis (hybrid vigor) because the constant selection of seed from record holding pumpkins would act to maintain the genetic alleles required for heterosis (aka silver bulletness). Honestly selfing is a usefull breeding tool but I'm not going to change any minds by revisiting that topic...

Junior back to your question it would seem to me that the best strategy for breeding for size is not to cross to smaller (older) material. Unless, and this is important, unless there was a specific trait you want to bring into the modern gene pool. For that you would have to back cross for 3,4,5 years to get to the point where it would be useful to the heavy hitters.

brian

10/4/2012 4:04:20 PM