Homestead mailing list

["Karen L. Black" <karen AT plamondon.com>]

James asks:

> I wondered if stabilizing a hybrid into an OP was feasible enough for us 
backwoodsmen to do it, why don't the professional seedsmen do it?

To develop a true-breeding strain, whether plant or animal, you need space,
time, an eye for the characteristics you want to keep, and careful
recordkeeping. Compared to that, taking two strains you know "nick" to make
a good hybrid and crossing them again is a piece of cake; all you have to do
is maintain two parent populations.

One advantage to starting development of a new variety from a hybrid is that
the hybrids usually have a wider assortment of genes than either parent.
When they are bred among themselves, this assortment will give rise to a lot
of variation. The breeder then has a better chance of finding the
characteristics he's looking for. This is why, for example, James Dryden
started his work in breeding a better layer by crossing Leghorns with
Plymouth Rocks, which led to the Oregon strain of Leghorns which could lay
over 300 eggs a year. He would not have gotten those numbers by sticking to
one breed, as the experience of Professor Gowan at the Maine Experimental
Station showed.

One can get results by selecting from within a strain, but the genes have to
exist in the strain's population. There's not much chance of getting a
yellow tomato by selecting from within a strain that produces red fruit.

A.L. Hagedoorn was one of the first generation of geneticists to work with
breeders to make breed improvement a more directed affair. His "Plant
Breeding," "Animal Breeding," and "Poultry Breeding" are very good
explanations of how genetics work. 

Karen Black
Norton Creek Press www.NortonCreekPress.com
Blodgett, OR