breeding Pepper crossing question

[armyofda12mnkeys]

Hey all,

I wanted to get into pepper crossing this year. I kinda did last year but didn't emasculate the receiving flowers at all, so left it up to chance to see if they would pollinate by brushing the flower I wanted to use as my 'male' and then putting a very small seed ziplock plastic around it that also contained the male flower touching the pistol just in case my initial transfer didn't work. I do see somewhere between 25% to 50% of my crosses are much different looking so it was somewhat a success. I'll do the real steps (aka emasculating) for new crosses i want to make to get that up to 100% this year . But anyway I had a question.

For the crossing guide on https://www.fatalii.net/growing_chile_peppers/breeding (chart below), they mention: "PF = F1 hybrids partially fertile", what does that mean?
The seeds of the cross I got last year that I am growing this year, aka my first year of the cross (aka F1), the seeds of those may or may not be fertile?
So if they grew out this spring and became plants this year, then Im good since that proves that particular F1 seed was Fertile? and every single plant of next year's generation will be viable/fertile and so on and so on (just have to stabilize the variation/genetics i want)?

or does that mean this years upcoming F1's seeds (which will become next years F2 plant) will only be partially fertile? So some of those seeds i collect this year may or may not actually grow next year?

Sorry if that was confusing, but hopefully someone can answer .

NG = F1 hybrids germinate normally
EC = F1 hybrids raised by embryo culture
IV = fruits/seeds set, but F1 seeds inviable
PF = F1 hybrids partially fertile
HF = F1 hybrids highly fertile

 

[CaneDog]

or does that mean this years upcoming F1's seeds (which will become next years F2 plant) will only be partially fertile? So some of those seeds i collect this year may or may not actually grow next year?

NG is intended to mean the seeds resulting from crossing the P1 and P2 are likely to germinate normally into F1's. PF to mean that the resulting F1's are likely be only partially fertile as to being capable of producing F2's.

Good luck with your hybrids! And if you're trying for 100%, consider isolating your male flower too to prevent it from experiencing pollen contamination (typically by insect visit) prior to it's use as a pollen donor.

 

[armyofda12mnkeys]

NG is intended to mean the seeds resulting from crossing the P1 and P2 are likely to germinate normally into F1's. PF to mean that the resulting F1's are likely be only partially fertile as to being capable of producing F2's.

Good luck with your hybrids! And if you're trying for 100%, consider isolating your male flower too to prevent it from experiencing pollen contamination (typically by insect visit) prior to it's use as a pollen donor.

Hey @CaneDog... May have a followup question...
so if 'NG' means "Normal Germination" and 'HF' is "Highly Fertile"... I guess 'NG' is like 90-100% of the seeds will probably germinate normally.
and what is 'HF' considered, like 75-90% normal germination?
and 'PF' is pretend 0%-75%?
Just throwing out some percentages as I'm curious how someone determines each of those 3 categories.

How about the 'EC' category (F1 hybrids raised by embryo culture). Not sure what that would mean.

Thanks for any guidance,
Ari

 

[CaneDog]

Hey @CaneDog... May have a followup question...
so if 'NG' means "Normal Germination" and 'HF' is "Highly Fertile"... I guess 'NG' is like 90-100% of the seeds will probably germinate normally.
and what is 'HF' considered, like 75-90% normal germination?
and 'PF' is pretend 0%-75%?
Just throwing out some percentages as I'm curious how someone determines each of those 3 categories.

How about the 'EC' category (F1 hybrids raised by embryo culture). Not sure what that would mean.

Thanks for any guidance,
Ari

As background, this table gets posted a lot on the internet. It's from an mid-1980's secondary source and, despite searching, I could never locate a copy of any primary source it referenced. I suspect it's not possible to get much more definite about applicable fertility percentages because, within any species certain varieties will cross better with certain varieties of another species than would others. It may be that HF and PF is more an indication of the percentage of pairings that resulted in fertility rather than the percentage of seeds from a given pairing that were fertile. This is something I'd hoped to understand better by reviewing the primary source data.

As far as F1 hybrids being raised by embryo culture, I suspect this is basically a way to bypass prezygotic and/or postzygotic barriers to interspecific embryo formation and development. I'm certainly no expert in this area. There are some good papers available on pre and post zygotic barriers. If this interests you, it's not hard to locate some with a google search.

I've enjoyed playing around with pepper crosses and hope you do as well. If you haven't already, check out ChilliCrosser's current thread. He's doing a lot of fun stuff right now with interspecific hybridization.

 

[armyofda12mnkeys]

Btw I have 2 'not-hot' pepper varieties (imagine Trinidad-Perfume/Aji Dulce/etc type peppers), both are yellow that I crossed last year and the 1 resulting F1 plant I got this year from them is also not-hot and yellow (although a different shape).
I wonder for next year's F2 generation, what are the chances of them also being not-hot and yellow color?
Both are features I'd like to maintain. I just want to see what crazy shapes I can get (the smaller the better).
I was wondering if any of these are known to be recessive traits that i can figure out via Mendel Charts how many of next years generation will have those features.

 

[CaneDog]

You're basically dealing with recessives, but it might not be quite that straightforward. In the case of yellow color, shades of yellow could be determined by mutation at a single or multiple genetic loci.

This should help with the color part of your question - https://the-biologist-is-in.blogspot.com/2015/11/the-color-of-peppers-2.html.

This might be worth a look re pungency. https://plant-breeding-genomics.extension.org/pepper-heat/

Would be cool to see the peppers you're working with if you felt like posting a few pics.

 

[armyofda12mnkeys]

Cool, thanks for the info. I'll check it out

I'll post more pics in a couple weeks once they all become ripe and I'm more sure they crossed.
Here is my first pepper to ripen this year this week that Im sure crossed (as they dont have the shape of BY, kinda a more medium size. smaller than GS but slightly larger[and definitely thinner] than BY)... also has the same 'no-heat' flavor of both:
GrenadaSeasoning x BiquinhoYellow: Chinense x Chinense = HF

I de-seeded it be4 the next pic to save the seeds:

The other one that Im sure really crossed (like 5 out of 10 plants do not have the small circle shape of P.I.... and the rest i'll have to taste to see if they have no heat but in the regular PI shape):
GrenadaSeasoning x Pérola Iaranja : Chinense x Chinense = (HF)
For these, I wanted to get a 'not hot' pepper into a super-extra-small shape/form-factor but PI is still hot so we'll see how these turn out.

I also tried a few others like that like:
GrenadaSeasoning x Aji Chaparita Iquitos: Chinense x (frutescens or Chinense???) = (PF or HF)
But I am skeptical these crossed (all these are in the small ACI shape right now... but that would be optimal if they have the small shape but less heat, won't know until i taste them in a week or 2).

There are more, but I'll have to check in a few weeks if they crossed.

 

[armyofda12mnkeys]

Some of the variegated colors in that article you sent are crazy cool. Im tempted to cross them into my current crosses next year hehe. Only unusual color i have available right now to cross with is 'Naga Smokey Rainbow' (but its not really variegated like those other ones at the bottom of the article).

 

[CaneDog]

Cool looking pepper with that bright yellow! I'm looking forward to seeing the others.

There's always so many fun things to try with peppers it's easy to end up with more projects than space

 

[armyofda12mnkeys]

Just curious, on this first F1 generation of the pepper I crossed last year, I got many plants that look different than either of the 2 peppers crossed from last year (different shape. different color, different heat... which is what i expected),
but this generation looks similar to each other (same shape, same color so far).
Is this normal?, I think I read the F2 generation will have the most variety of shapes/colors/heat that you will then stabilize...
but curious if the F1 plants will have any variety differences?
so pretend these came from 10 seeds from 1 pepper that was successfully crossed.... Will there be any variety/differences this year among those 10 plants?

 

[CaneDog]

Yes, what you're saying is generally correct. The F1's will typically look different than each of the parents and the similar to one another. How similar they look to one another depends on how stable/homozygous each of the parents were. If the parents were both very stable, then the F1's should look very similar to one another. If the parents weren't at all stable (heterozygous), the F1's will be more different to one another. Also, note that F1's can sometimes look a lot like one of the parents when 1 parent has lots of dominant characteristics for the traits you notice, e.g., pod color, taste, etc.

When you get to the F2 generation (assuming reasonably homozygous parents and largely similar appearing F1's), generally you will see much more diversity. That's because in the F1, all the D/r pairings had the recessive trait hidden by the Dominant trait (an over-simplification, but useful). In the F2, those genetic dice get rolled again and all the D/r F1 dominant expressive pairings can become r/r recessive expressive pairings in the F2.

As to your question about 10 F1 seeds, if the P1 and P2 were each perfectly homozygous at each locus, then they'll all be genetically identical. The greater the heterozygosity, of the parents, the more likely the F1's will look different from one another. If you have good confidence in the parents, you might grow out only a single F1. But you're likely to want to grow out several F2's in any case to see what recessive pairings will show up in the F2's.

 

[armyofda12mnkeys]

Gotcha, thanks for the info!
Yeh the parents for this cross i think were pretty much very established named peppers (GrenadaSeasoning x Pérola Iaranja).
I've grown the former with my own seeds for years. I grew a few Pérola Iaranja last year... I will say one of the 4 P.I.'s was red vs usual salmon color. I'll have to look back at my notes to see which one was used for this cross.
All 6 successes I have all look like this (well 2 out of the 6 so far ripened red, and all 6 have the same shape):

 

[armyofda12mnkeys]

Here are pics of the parents for people unfamiliar with them :
Grenada Seasoning (pic off internet):

Pérola Iaranja (2 of my pics last summer to show the regular salmon vs more unusual red variation):

Can see the colors a bit better at the end of fall/winter hehe:

 

[armyofda12mnkeys]

This one was label Aji Charapita (Iquitos variation), but I also had an Aji Charapita Red variation in the same tray. I am a bit doubtful I labeled wrong (or again doubtful but Charapita seeds are very small so maybe a Red seed switched locations in the seed tray after spraying with water).
I also crossed Aji Charapita with some things, but those were in another tray so I can maybe rule that out.
So this is either an accidental cross Im thinking or Aji Charapita Red.
Does anyone know if Aji Charapita Red starts off purple?
its also larger than regular Aji Charapita as seen in this video:

 

[BDP]

I can’t believe you were able to get viable crosses without castrating the “mother” flowers.

Good work! I’m excited to watch your cultivars stabilize!

 

[armyofda12mnkeys]

I can’t believe you were able to get viable crosses without castrating the “mother” flowers.

Good work! I’m excited to watch your cultivars stabilize!

yeh the success looks like it was about 53% (on the crosses that I did on purpose, 6 out of the 12 in the video and one GrenadaSeasoning x BiquinhoYellow so 7/13).
I still did some good practices like using unopened flowers on both the providing and receiving flowers.
and I enclosed each flower with one of those mini-ziplocks (that are used for seed storage) after I pollinated so nothing else could pollinate them.

Here is the other cross that I got alot of (Grenada Seasoning x Pérola Iaranja ):

Its red and hot (unfortunately). Was hoping to get Grenada Seasoning's non-hotness into very small sized form but instead got pretty hot one in a medium sized form... Maybe next year in F2 Generation .

 

[BDP]

yeh the success looks like it was about 53% (on the crosses that I did on purpose, 6 out of the 12 in the video and one GrenadaSeasoning x BiquinhoYellow so 7/13).
I still did some good practices like using unopened flowers on both the providing and receiving flowers.
and I enclosed each flower with one of those mini-ziplocks (that are used for seed storage) after I pollinated so nothing else could pollinate them.

Here is the other cross that I got alot of (Grenada Seasoning x Pérola Iaranja ):

Its red and hot (unfortunately). Was hoping to get Grenada Seasoning's non-hotness into very small sized form but instead got pretty hot one in a medium sized form... Maybe next year in F2 Generation .

Cool stuff! Just keep at it… you’ll get your micro-sweet!

 

[armyofda12mnkeys]

Btw if anyone want seeds of these crosses, let me know:
Grenada Seasoning x Pérola Iaranja (F1 was red + medium-sized pointy shaped + hot; but want to stabilize very-small pea-sized shaped +'not-hot' [color doesn't matter to me, but i usually like yellow fruit more])
or
Grenada Seasoning x BiquinhoYellow (F1 was yellow + shaped a bit different than either parents + 'not-hot' [maybe because both parents were not-hot] as I wanted, would be fun to see what differences get in F2 that can stabilize when get more variation in that generation).
or
Accidental Aji Charapita cross (larger fruit, very productive still, initially purple until turns red, instead of smaller and the usual yellow-orange color)

Lemmee know how many seeds and I'll ship free of charge if you can trial some out for me.

Thanks!,
Ari

 

[armyofda12mnkeys]

I might have a question about heat-level genetics...
Is that a simple Hot vs NotHot trait that I can use like a Punnett/Mendellian Square Chart to figure out,
aka something like this where NotHot is a recessive trait.

F1 results (manually created hybrid pepper):

then upcoming F2 results this summer (assuming hybrid is self-pollinated):

 

[CaneDog]

Hey AOT12M. Sounds like you'll have an interesting season ahead working with your hybrids.

I'm still not 100% on the pungency genetics, but my understanding of this is that capsaicinoid production is generally controlled by a single dominant C (Pun) gene, but capsaicinoid content is a quantitatively inherited trait involving multiple loci over multiple chromosomes.

I've read that the recessive (c or pun-1) non-pungent trait is found (naturally) only in annuum. For chinese, there is a less common mutation at a different locus, the recessive lov (loss of vesicle) that results in non-pungency.

So, if you're dealing with either, but not both, of c/pun-1 or lov, the presence of pungency would be a single-locus dominant trait, F1's would be phenotypically pungent, and a monohybrid punnett square model would apply.

But, if you're dealing with parents where each is complimentarily dominant at one pungency locus and recessive at the other (an aaBB x AA/bb scenario), a dihybrid punnett square model should apply with complementation figuring into the model. Complementation would indicate 100% pungency at F1 as well as pungency in any event of aaBB or aaBa type result, phenotypically masking a stabilized recessive "non-pungent" pairing at only one of the loci. By comparison, a non-complementary dihybrid model would allow you to see either of the two recessive pairings phenotypically, making the selection and recombination process easier.

Lastly, getting back to the degree of capsaicinoid content being a quantitatively inherited trait, when pungency is expressed phenotypically there remain at least several other loci to consider as to the degree of pungency, which might range from barely perceptible to melts-your-face-off.

Hope that helps some. It's an interesting topic to think through. If anyone would like to contribute something I'd be interested to hear it and don't think it would take things off-topic.