To: North American Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Fruit Seed Request
Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2005 20:58:45 -0500
Jim,
I suggest you go ahead and stabilize the hybrid. You will have to
sacrifice a little part of the crop to do this and save the seed, but in
the end it would be your OP pepper - not a hybrid. You could save that
seed, and SSE and other organizations would help you preserve it.
I went to several workshops last year studying how to stabilize hybrids
(what people call "de-hybridize) and save clean, disease-free seed. It
is not as complicated as you might imagine and the plant parent
population required is not necessarily huge. Peppers are amenable, the
only problem being that you can't grow any other peppers anywhere around
the ones you are working with. They cross very readily. I attended a
workshop given by John Navazio from the Organic Seed Alliance (contact
matthew@seedalliance.org) on selection and breed improvement and he gave
us a step-by-step procedure for stabilizing a hybrid. I am a novice at
this breeding stuff, but it sounded so do-able, I set off on a quest to
save Silver Queen corn. (I grew up with it and would like it to be
around in the future, not at someone's whim). I started improving a
favorite tomato, have started saving seed of some favorites with a view
towards "regionalization improvement" of the crop, and certain Nafex
members can tell you that I even grow seedling trees and am tempted to
"let 'em fruit". (Maybe we'll get a better tree if we work with nature.)
I am sorry so little breeding work is being done in fruit these days. I
think gene-info is cool, but am not convinced that moving genes around
between species is, at our current level of ignorance, a good idea.
Barbara Rosholdt
Zone 6c/7a Virginia