Thread: Weird hybrid
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Old 09-18-2013, 07:53 AM   #20 (permalink)
shannondicorse
 
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Default Re: Weird hybrid

Quote:
Originally Posted by Baboon View Post
....If any of you have any ideas please post them.Just to remind,my goal is to have a banana variety that can give a decent amount of ripe fruit within one growing season in zone 6.I imagine this variety as a very short plant with big leaves and vigorous growth,but not too needy for nutrients and banana bunches would not be huge,but not too small either.
Baboon,

Here's what I can suggest. I know from experience that the ABB Orinoco group can produce 2x AB pollen. The A genome, almost by default, carries the p1, p2 & p3 genes thought responsible for parthenocarpy in banana.

Using allotriploid cultivars as pollen donors is, in my experience, the best way to go about banana breeding on a low budget.

So you can try to pollinate velutina with Orinoco. Velutina makes nice fat pulpy fruit; unlike ornata and laterita. Velutina X balbisiana hybrids do exist - another plus.

It is my observation that the triploids produced when Orinoco pollinates Musa acuminata malaccensis are often parthenocarpic.

I believe that it is more useful to get triploid F1s than diploid or tetraploid. Triploids force recombinations among chromosomes of different species far better than allotetraploids or allodiploids.

You can then backcross to velutina using whatever pollen you can scrounge from your triploid F1s; hoping for more triploids with recombinant chromosomes in the offspring; and selecting for parthenocarpy and cool-tolerance. You can iterate this process indefinitely.

To do this well you'd need at least half acre of field space - and much more if you don't ruthlessly cull.

After you've fixed a few lines of reasonably dwarf, annual cycling parthenocarps; you might try to see if you can get segregates from their selfed progeny.

Normal banana breeding doesn't work like this; there aren't really enough progeny, and the genetic base is often too narrow to look for segregates as a practical approach.

Problem is though, it's really hard to breed a long cycling tropical crop like this in a greenhouse. You need an open field in a tropical environment.

You have a chance, as you're not breeding a "commercial" banana; but an edible curiousity for backyard horticulturists. This is one step above breeding florists' bananas by hybridisation.

I understand the allure of getting a nice annual banana that you can put into the ground in spring and munch on later in the summer!


shannon


shannon.di.corse@gmail.com
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