this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2024
33 points (94.6% liked)
Gardening
3402 readers
30 users here now
Your Ultimate Gardening Guide.
Rules
- Be respectful and inclusive.
- No harassment, hate speech, or trolling.
- Engage in constructive discussions.
- Share relevant content.
- Follow guidelines and moderators' instructions.
- Use appropriate language and tone.
- Report violations.
- Foster a continuous learning environment.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
If you cross AA males with BB females, you get all AB babies ("hybrids").
But if you cross AB males with AB females, you get a mix of AA, AB, AB, and BB babies.
If you want to reliably produce lots of AB babies every year, you need a reserve population of true AA and BB breeding stock.
And that's with just one gene. A specific breed or landrace can have lots of distinct genes.
So when the breeder has a hybrid they like, let’s call that AB (F1), they want to grow and sell more of that variety. So the following year, they will use their reserve population of true AA and BB parents and hand pollinate them. But they still won’t know if the seeds produced will be anything like AB (F1), right? So are those hybrids only available for 1 year or as long as those original seeds remain viable?
Seeds of many species, when stored correctly, can still germinate for decades. I have used seed that was 30+ years old several times before.
Breeders produce inbred parental lines by self-pollinating for 5-8 generations (or double-haploid creation).
They then do a small initial seed increase by bulking a generation. Bulking refers to combining the seeds from several plants (I used nethouse with 24 cantaloupe plants and a small young queen honeybee hive inside to produce 0.5-1kg of seed).
This is called basic or breeder seed. This lot is tested for genetic uniformity and seedborne diseases. It's also used for small hybrid seed productions to test out the inbred.
Breeder seed is increased again and bulked to make foundation seed (around 50kg for cantaloupes) This is used to make the first commercial production of the hybrid. It is then increased yet again to produce stock seed (500kg)
Stock seed is what the commercial hybrid is produced from for the rest of its life. Foundation seed is used to produce more stock seed as needed.
The breeder seed and foundation seed are stored carefully to prolong it's life. The stock seed is in the general warehouse with the hybrid seed.
As long as they maintain quality control during the inbred increase process, the resulting hybrid will always be essentially the same.
Oh that’s amazing that they can get the same results each time. Like if my wife and I tried to make 8 children that all looked the same that would be impossible.