Fascinating stuff! I’ve started experimenting with squash crosses. I’m extremely interested in locally adapted landrace crops. My pinned thread chronicles real-time my learning more and more about landraces and Darwinian farming.
Squash are really annoying for their shape genetics. Multiple separate genes mimic each other in regards to fruit shape, but with different inheritance patterns.
So far I’ve been crossing only winter squash. Mostly getting butternut shape, but all with unique coloring. I got one oddball fruit that was like a green version of a yellow crookneck summer squash.
My pinned thread has a couple of photos of squash I harvested this winter. Most of seeds planted I believe were f2 seeds I saved from acorn, butternut and pumpkin. Plus gourd seeds saved from a friend’s garden. My hope is to see natural selection produce strains that survive our wide weather swings.
There are solid dark brown varieties of tepary beans.
With what I've learned from these seeds, solid brown types may have the additional genetics I will need to get a solid blue/purple variety in the future.
The more realistic result would be that an additional cross would teach me something more about how the genes interact, which may later then help me get to a specific goal.
I can just as easily make a model for three genes impacting seed color, but that would get a bit onerous to lay out here.
The spectrum of results in the next generation may be informative. It would certainly help if I had more than the 6 or so seeds I had that looked to by from a hybrid plant.
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The expression of the blue/purple speckles seems to also be dependent on environmental conditions.
If weather doesn't go the right way, the speckles can be extremely faded.
Or something. I have very limited information on this.
With what I've learned from these seeds, solid brown types may have the additional genetics I will need to get a solid blue/purple variety in the future.
I still need to work out the logic, though.
The spectrum of results in the next generation may be informative. It would certainly help if I had more than the 6 or so seeds I had that looked to by from a hybrid plant.