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Stabilizing for desired shape

Jeffcontonio

Jeffcontonio

One of my plants is putting out some interesting shaped Moruga. I'd like to stabilize it so that it consistently produces "tulip shaped" pods.

How many generations do you think it would take to achieve this goal?
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Hey Jeff probably 2 or 3 under isolation remember extreme pod selection is key.People often confuse stabilizing and growing out a cross ( 7 or 8 generations) two completely different ventures in my opinion.
 
Have been seed saving for years.  Only started intentionally crossing a couple years ago.  So I am no expert on hybrids at all.  Reading a lot, experimenting a lot, and can share observations.  But no expert.  So here we go.

What Browndd1 said is conventional wisdom for hybrids.  About 8 generations.  But I found you can speed this up a great deal by growing indoors under 24 hours of light. I put them out in the summer then back under the 24 hour light when weather gets bad.  But when indoors, the 24 hour light speeds them up and does not effect flowing like other plants.  I was very surprised.  So figure 4 years if it is a hybrid.  At about the second generation weird things tend to happen.

Here is the thing: Is it really a hybrid?  You should still grow it out for the recommended 8 generations, but sometimes what we think is new is a variant that has been in a seed strain for years.  So it might be fine generation after generation.  I have some Jigsaw that put out things that look like perfect little moruga scorpions the first year.  Been saving and growing and they always look and taste the same.  Make my tongue numb every year.  Really odd.


 
 
Unfortunately genetics are complicated. You might be lucky and keep getting seeds that grow into plants that produce pods like the parent. It might also be nearly impossible.
 
If it's an unexpected hybrid, I think the previously mentioned ~8 generations should be enough to consistently give you the same phenotype (assuming constant growing conditions). Numbers are key here, grow lots of plants each generation to give yourself the best chance of the correct phenotype showing up.
 
If you want to make sure you can keep harvesting pods that look like that,
Malarky said:
clone it
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Good luck, those certainly are some cool looking pods!
 
it's worth a shot. I'm drying some seeds now, and I'll probably save the whole plant over winter.


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FreeportBum said:
You could plant seeds from those pods and get peppers that look nothing like the original. Plant heath,climate,growing conditions will all influence pod shape, it's a crap shoot. good luck
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Couple years ago, had a plant that gave all pods that looked like a triple butt plug.  Not extra tasty or over the top hot or anything.  But the shape..... Oh I wanted to bring Satan's Butt Plug to the world.  Just like you said, offspring looked nothing like the mother.  Pods glued shut and bagged just to be sure. 
 
I would say you are asking the wrong question. It's not about the number of generations and more about the progeny. If you want to stabilise this then you need to grow out many many plants, start making clones now to take a greater seed harvest next year. It may take hundreds of plants but what you need is one to continue the process. I honestly don't know the science of back crossing, in theory you should be able to back cross pollen from the second gen to the original to stabilise the trait and pretty much job done. How this differs from a self pollinated seed I don't know but I read it somewhere so it must be true. :S
 
So basically what I need to do is grow a bunch of plants from seeds and find one that has similar genetics and cross it with the mother plant or clone?


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I'd say keep that plant, or clone it to use as genetic stock. Grow the seeds out from the desired pods (after you make sure it is isolated) and if you don't get the desired pheno, backcross it to the plant has your desired pheno, THEN grow those seeds out and see if you get your pheno. Nice work, those are really beautiful.
 
Selection is key. The more plants you grow out, the more you'll have to select from. Keep selecting the same trait over and over again through each generation. How many generations? depends, just do it until you can't differentiate from the progeny and report back with us with that number! hehe
 
Breeding diagrams will give you an idea of how many generations it will need to express the desired trait in xx% of the progeny...
 
Most breeders stop at f6 to stabilize a specific trait across almost all progeny.
 
vv - This only works if you are very good about selecting the SAME trait each time - vv
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Beautiful pheno & very unique Jeff!
 
One thing I'm not is an expert but I try to learn everything I can when situations like this come up so I started with "back crossing" as I don't remember this being discussed before.> Introduction to Backcross Breeding In reading through it I think this breeding method is to introduce a wanted gene into a plant without it. Will back crossing a wanted gene into a plant that already has it work or help stabilize that gene? Dunno.... Anyone have insight?
 
Of course growing out to stabilize a trait is often discussed and my fall-back treatise is one on peppers relative, the tomato.> Tomato Gene Basics The chart from mrgrowguy is in this information packed crossing guide and you'll note just above it on page 2 is the progression from F1 through F8 where the percentage of plants that will grow the trait crosses to 99% and not much improvement happens after that, hence F8 is generally considered the cut point.
 
If you're serious about dedicating next season to this project I think you need to consider that the current plant is F1 and the plants from these seeds will only produce 50% of the pheno your looking for. Of course you won't know which plants are going to produce the wanted trait so that's a lot of isolation to get a batch of seeds that potentially have a 25% chance. I'm not trying to discourage you, just wanted you to know the amount of dedication needed is what usually discourages others. As mrgrowguy posted, "Selection is key. The more plants you grow out, the more you'll have to select from. Keep selecting the same trait over and over again through each generation.".
 
Last is the cloning suggestions, if you want a large quantity of pods next season this is the best way to produce the pheno, but of course this is still a F1 plant with no progress in isolating the trait. 

Whatever you choose to do, GOOD LUCK! and keep us posted.
 
`
 
The_NorthEast_ChileMan said:
Beautiful pheno & very unique Jeff!
 
One thing I'm not is an expert but I try to learn everything I can when situations like this come up so I started with "back crossing" as I don't remember this being discussed before.> Introduction to Backcross Breeding In reading through it I think this breeding method is to introduce a wanted gene into a plant without it. Will back crossing a wanted gene into a plant that already has it work or help stabilize that gene? Dunno.... Anyone have insight?
 
Of course growing out to stabilize a trait is often discussed and my fall-back treatise is one on peppers relative, the tomato.> Tomato Gene Basics The chart from mrgrowguy is in this information packed crossing guide and you'll note just above it on page 2 is the progression from F1 through F8 where the percentage of plants that will grow the trait crosses to 99% and not much improvement happens after that, hence F8 is generally considered the cut point.
 
If you're serious about dedicating next season to this project I think you need to consider that the current plant is F1 and the plants from these seeds will only produce 50% of the pheno your looking for. Of course you won't know which plants are going to produce the wanted trait so that's a lot of isolation to get a batch of seeds that potentially have a 25% chance. I'm not trying to discourage you, just wanted you to know the amount of dedication needed is what usually discourages others. As mrgrowguy posted, "Selection is key. The more plants you grow out, the more you'll have to select from. Keep selecting the same trait over and over again through each generation.".
 
Last is the cloning suggestions, if you want a large quantity of pods next season this is the best way to produce the pheno, but of course this is still a F1 plant with no progress in isolating the trait. 

Whatever you choose to do, GOOD LUCK! and keep us posted.
 
`
Click to expand...
One thing I am noticing is that only a small percentage of the pods are showing that trait. An off the top of my head guess would be 10-25%. So I'm not sure if my efforts are going to be very productive. I'm still going to try. I have a few gardens in different locations, this one is a few blocks away. so dedicating this one exclusively to this project is not that big of a deal. Plus it would help with isolation.




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