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Space issues with growing out F2 generation

synclinorium

synclinorium

Hey all, this is a question directed at people who have experience stabilizing crosses. I know that there are a lot of other logistical issues to consider in stabilizing a cross (isolating plants, for example), but perhaps the one most prohibitive to the average grower is the growing space issue. Since the F2 generation is one with the greatest phenotypic variability, in order to select for desirable traits you need a great number of plants (or otherwise be extremely lucky), a metric crapload if I'm not mistaken.

I don't know if I'll get around to trying it this season, but I was wondering if anyone ever used a sort of high-density planting scheme where plants were nixed throughout the season as undesirable traits showed themselves. One would expect an overall decrease in plant productivity as a result of high-density planting, but hypothetically if one were remove the unwanted plants as they continue to mature, more space could be made available for plants with desirable traits which would at least help improve their conditions. Win-win, maybe?

I guess what I'm wondering is how many plants one could get away with per unit planting area. I've seen some pretty crazy examples with seedlings, but since I'd be looking primarily at the peppers themselves we're talking much larger plants.
 
I've had the same question. How many F2s do people typically sort through to find the ones expressing what appear to be the right gene combinations? I would think the number would have to be pretty high.
 
synclinorium said:
I don't know if I'll get around to trying it this season, but I was wondering if anyone ever used a sort of high-density planting scheme where plants were nixed throughout the season as undesirable traits showed themselves.
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My growing season isn't long enough. I'd have a hard time deciding which plant exhibited desirable traits (excluding diseased plants) until 2/3 of the season was up.
 
I'm going with luck and saving seeds, so it may takes 2 or 3 years to get seeds from my f1's I am growing starting this year. I have seed from last year still and well hopefully before they are all grown I will find an agreeable f1.
 
I try to grow at least 50+ f2s but in certain cases I do kill off the undesirables as they start to show. For example last year I grew about 50 of one of my f2 crosses, and only 1 had the characteristics I was looking for. This year I'm already getting rid of f3s that don't have the disirable traits early on and am growing at least 50 plants again, maybe 100

Hoping to stabilize or improve on this awesome f2

July 28 002 by potawie, on Flickr
 
POTAWIE said:
I try to grow at least 50+ f2s but in certain cases I do kill off the undesirables as they start to show. For example last year I grew about 50 of one of my f2 crosses, and only 1 had the characteristics I was looking for. This year I'm already getting rid of f3s that don't have the disirable traits early on and am growing at least 50 plants again, maybe 100

Hoping to stabilize or improve on this awesome f2
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I remember seeing that cross potawie, awesome plant. Good luck.

Justaguy said:
I'm going with luck and saving seeds, so it may takes 2 or 3 years to get seeds from my f1's I am growing starting this year. I have seed from last year still and well hopefully before they are all grown I will find an agreeable f1.
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Ha, yeah, I think I will rely on luck too. I'm not even sure what I have is a cross, I'm just curious to see the pod variability in the F2s if it is. If the seller wasn't completely scamming me it's an accidental Trinidad Scorpion mother crossed with some early Chinese, he thinks his Ecuadorian Devil's Breath. Very pungent aroma, decent heat, prolific and early. Unfortunately the heat is more in the Hab range than the superhot range, so, I don't know if that expression would change in the next generation.

I only have the one mother plant and a limited number of saved seeds, so it may be another season before I have a chance to experiment much.
 
POTAWIE said:
I try to grow at least 50+ f2s but in certain cases I do kill off the undesirables as they start to show. For example last year I grew about 50 of one of my f2 crosses, and only 1 had the characteristics I was looking for. This year I'm already getting rid of f3s that don't have the disirable traits early on and am growing at least 50 plants again, maybe 100

Hoping to stabilize or improve on this awesome f2

July 28 002 by potawie, on Flickr
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That's a cool looking plant! I have a lot of crosses I want to make. It looks like I'll have to focus on one while doing the F2s. I wanna cross a Thai dragon pepper with a bhut jolokia. I'm wondering if I can get it to fruit upright, have bigger pods than the Thai dragon, be more productive, and hotter. Are the F1s usually the same each time you cross them?
 
I have one set of F2 seeds I'm only growing 12 plants, I just don't have any more space available. It seems there is a continuum, on side luck the other extreme control. 50+ sounds great, but to have only one out of those... must be some pretty damn recessive traits there!
 
Spicegeist said:
I have one set of F2 seeds I'm only growing 12 plants, I just don't have any more space available. It seems there is a continuum, on side luck the other extreme control. 50+ sounds great, but to have only one out of those... must be some pretty damn recessive traits there!
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Sounds very recessive! I'll be in the same boat as you next year after I get my F1s this year. I doubt I could pull off more than 15 or so. I'm gonna have to keep some parents around for backcrossing and others for selecting good seeds from stable plants.
 
F1's are pretty much always the same.
I've tried relying on luck with crosses and it just doesn't work and was a waste of a lot of time. You need to grow lot of plants or the odds are very much against you. 50 plants is not a lot, its probably about the minimum I'd want to grow for successful crosses, although most people new to making crosses just want something different looking and they want to name it right away. This can be very easy to do but is not usually an improvement or any better than either parent, just different looking in pod appearance.
To me backcrossing with chiles is a last resort when after several generations you still don't see the desired characteristics. Much easier IMO to start with more f2-f3s+ to get those possible traits rather than spend the extra years to cross and stabilize again.

"50+ sounds great, but to have only one out of those... must be some pretty damn recessive traits there!"
It depends how many traits you are trying to develop. I am looking for several obvious traits(at least 3) so its not as simple as breeding for 1 shape or 1 color. Breeding for looks is easy, its the crosses I have where I'm trying to improve upon heat levels or flavor that are the difficult ones to test and compare and evaluate.
 
Yep... for me, I'd be paying attention to flavor and heat (I'm not really looking forward to testing all of those TS crosses should I decide to grow them out... ), but for aesthetics I'd like something similar to the Trinidad Scorpion in terms of appearance. Let's say you're dealing with a simple dominant/recessive phenotypic expression, you have a 1/4 chance of finding a plant expressing a recessive trait. In reality genetics gets much more complicated (traits may be tied up in complexes where several traits may be associated), but in this case let's use the simple example. For three independent recessive traits, you'd have a 1/4 * 1/4 * 1/4 = 1/64 chance of finding a plant with all three traits, This is where luck comes in, because if you take many growers all trying to do the same thing, one guy might luck out and find that 1/20 plants has the desired characteristics, and another guy might have 1/250. It would all average out to 1/64, but luck really is a major factor...

It's one of those statistical quirks that is fun to think about.

Then of course there is the subjective nature of testing traits like heat or flavor... depends on how you feel at the time, whether or not the plants' growing conditions were identical (hint: they aren't), and several other factors to consider.

I think a better approach for the average grower is to go into plant breeding with minimal expectations- grow out a few plants every year, see what they produce. Select the ones you like, or don't, and try again next year. Expecting a plant to have X, Y, Z, Q, and B, well... yeah, good luck with that, get back to me in 12 years...
 
One nice thing about mine is I am am about 95% sure they a crossed. I have a few of the mother variety going and one of the father variety. Both are normal height but all the cros sprouts are banging way up. I have read many places that is very common with f1's.
 
Justaguy said:
One nice thing about mine is I am am about 95% sure they a crossed. I have a few of the mother variety going and one of the father variety. Both are normal height but all the cros sprouts are banging way up. I have read many places that is very common with f1's.
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Yeah, they all it hybrid vigor :) .
 
Great thread on polygenic inheritance. Brings back fond memories of grad school and reading all four volumes of Sewall Wright's Evolution and the Genetics of Populations. . .
 
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