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breeding Backcrossing for stablization?

Breeders and people working with interesting crosses, what are your thoughts on backcrossing with regards to our beloved fire breathing fruit? I know the canna community discusses this quite a bit, but was wondering if it holds any value in the chile world.
 
Backcrossing in case you are not familiar with it, is taking the progeny of a plant cross and recrossing it with one of it's parents in hopes of stabilizing certain traits. With the canna folks, typically it means each successive progeny is backcrossed with the original mom.
 
Now let's take for example [member='smileyguy697']'s Tepin x Lemon Drop. I was talking with Mike about this cross last year and he was saying how it's been really hard for him to get the phenotype he was wanting---slightly enlongated if I remember correctly. I wonder if backcrossing with the Lemon Drop might help in bringing out that particular trait.
 
It is of course more complicated than just that since there are so many traits to look out for, but I really wonder if this might not be helpful.
 
jedisushi06 said:
yes back crossing is a good thing.  And yes us cannabis growers back cross with pollen to make the strain even more stable. 
 
Mike, you think it would work well with peppers?
 
yes should work just as well for peppers. I dont have much pepper experience but plenty with breeding the above mentioned.
 
It would work, just keep in mind, you are bring back 1/2 of the genes of the parent you back cross too. This is often done when you want to bring a single trait into an established variety. Often disease resistance. Or changing a fruit or flower color.
 
You might want to do it once, then let the plants from that self pollinate, grow those out and see what you get. You need to let the genes resegregate to see what you have.
 
Similar idea in animal breeding. It is nearly impossible to bring new livestock into the USA, but you can import sperm. So, use the sperm on a different breed, you get 1/2, back cross again, you get 3/4, back cross again you get 7/8 again 15/16, which I think is considered "pure" in this country.
 
FYI, importing of Honey Bee sperm is not allowed.
 
Why can't you import honeybee sperm? Because of the pollination habits? Introducing different breeds of bees that would damage the environment?
 
They don't want to get anything more of the African sub species. Also, the Cape subspecies is dangerous in that a worker bee can go into another hive, kill the queen, take over, and actually lay fertilized eggs (fertile eggs are female, non-fertilized eggs are drones - male, which do no work.) This trait was thought to have developed do to the high winds in the normal native range.
 
The trait, at a very, very low rate, is in the honey bees already in the USA, but not to the point that selective breeding is an issue, plus they aren't as aggressive as the African sub species (well, not all African sub species are aggressive.)
 
filmost said:
 
Mike, you think it would work well with peppers?
Well remember that pepper plants self pollinate themselves so pollen from another plant is not needed.  Plus these crosses are vary unstable and throw different shaped pods out each year.  So to answer your question i'm not sure if it would work based on pod shape and the fact that pepper plants have both male and female organs. 
 
Well remember that pepper plants self pollinate themselves so pollen from another plant is not needed.  Plus these crosses are vary unstable and throw different shaped pods out each year.  So to answer your question i'm not sure if it would work based on pod shape and the fact that pepper plants have both male and female organs. 

Oh that is true, I forgot about that. Although I guess is one were to emasculate the flowers on the mother then it could be doable. Might be a fair bit more work than with canna.
 
Old thread, I know, but it should be known that back-crossing can be a double edged sword that sounds better than it may be.
 
It definitely can be a good thing, but can also mess up the breeding you have worked so hard to achieve.
 
Examples:
 
-Mother and father not inbred (random cross?)-
Lets say you breed a new hybrid to IBL (inbred line) so that all of the progeny are relatively the same (over 90% stable). And lets say, for argument sake, you got a good combination of traits from your new progeny but you decide that there just isn't enough flavor from the mother's side (again, just making this up as I go), then it would likely be a good thing to back cross to the original mother plant. The only problem here is that now the progeny of the back-cross will include other traits that you have spent years breeding out. Yes, you may get the flavor you want, but you may also get things like odd shaped pods again, which were stabilized generations ago in the hybrid.
 
-Mother and Father are inbred-
Now, lets take the same type of example but this time you have already made the (original) father and (original) mother into inbred lines before crossing them, then if you were to take the newly IBL'd progeny and back cross it to the original parent, then you will be using 50% of the (stable) hybrid genes that you liked and bred, and 50% of the traits from the original mother. The seeds resulting would likely show phenotypes that are anywhere from similar to the progeny, to similar to the mother, and every possible mix of those two genes in between.
 
I use IBL's for examples because those genetics are pure to what you designed them to be. But if you take seeds that were just the result of some cross from some dude and just liked the plant you got because you got lucky, then the progeny of that plant can carry any trait that has not been bred out (from mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, who knows). So if you spend all your time breeding a specific pepper and then decide to back cross it with the plant you originally "got lucky" with, then you will be polluting the genes again, just with a stronger lean towards the original mother plant. In other words, you destabilize the progeny by adding more genetic possibility. This is a common goal in canna because seed poppers like to run unstable or semi-stable (usually prefer F2) seeds to see what they can get from it.
 
Sorry if this is confusing
 
mrgg
 
 
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