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Post by nicolas on Mar 3, 2015 3:39:40 GMT -5
I guess that bagging should be enough to prevent cross pollination between JAs ?
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Post by starry on Mar 3, 2015 8:17:54 GMT -5
For making crosses with H. annuus, it seems helpful to have only a single clone of JA flowering nearby. The self-incompatibility shown by JA will generally prevent it from setting seed, leaving you with a higher confidence that seed will be produced from a cross with your sunflower of choice. This can easily be managed while growing lots of diverse JA by keeping the flowers of non-female parent JA plants cut back. That sounds like a good strategy. |
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Mar 3, 2015 16:36:04 GMT -5
I think that my biggest hurdle to getting sunroots to cross with annual sunflowers would be getting them to flower at the same time... It seems to me like sunroots flower very late in the season here, after the annual sunflowers are finished. I suppose that I could do it like corn, and plant successive crops of annual sunflowers in hopes that at least some would flower at the same time as the sunroots.
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Post by starry on Mar 3, 2015 17:17:04 GMT -5
I think that my biggest hurdle to getting sunroots to cross with annual sunflowers would be getting them to flower at the same time... It seems to me like sunroots flower very late in the season here, after the annual sunflowers are finished. I suppose that I could do it like corn, and plant successive crops of annual sunflowers in hopes that at least some would flower at the same time as the sunroots. That has been an issue for me too. I was thinking of doing that same strategy this year to get the flowering to overlap. |
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Post by darrenabbey on Mar 4, 2015 1:44:03 GMT -5
My initial H. annuus x H. tuberosus cross lucked out with my parent plants having coincident flowering. I was already planning to stagger plant my various colored sunflower seed lines this year before I thought about the utility of doing so for these crosses.
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Post by darrenabbey on Mar 4, 2015 1:45:04 GMT -5
I guess that bagging should be enough to prevent cross pollination between JAs ? That should work just fine. I just haven't gotten used to the practice, so I thought of the other method. |
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Post by darrenabbey on Apr 8, 2015 3:03:11 GMT -5
My F1 hybrid (H. tuberosus x H. annuus "Russian Mammoth") tuber has woken up right on schedule, even though it spent the winter in a basement refrigerator.
I'll get some photos when I plant it and the root crown in the next couple of days. I still need to figure out how to protect them from the local deer (sighted 5 in my yard today).
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Post by starry on Apr 9, 2015 14:47:09 GMT -5
My F1 hybrid (H. tuberosus x H. annuus "Russian Mammoth") tuber has woken up right on schedule, even though it spent the winter in a basement refrigerator. I'll get some photos when I plant it and the root crown in the next couple of days. I still need to figure out how to protect them from the local deer (sighted 5 in my yard today). Looking forward to photos! |
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Post by darrenabbey on Apr 16, 2015 22:29:36 GMT -5
My F1 hybrid (H. tuberosus x H. annuus "Russian Mammoth") tuber has woken up right on schedule, even though it spent the winter in a basement refrigerator.  The tuber started growing and the crown-bud had separated from the decaying original roots. In future years I'll trim old roots far more severely for over-winter storage. I planted both at the edge of my yard where they should get sufficient sunlight. I should have a couple days before they grow to above ground level, so I really need to figure out a method to protect them from deer. Once they get tall enough, the deer shouldn't be a real danger for them... but how tall that is still needs to be determined. I didn't photograph the holes they went into... but I will definitely take photographs of when they come up. |
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Post by starry on Apr 27, 2015 9:05:19 GMT -5
My F1 hybrid (H. tuberosus x H. annuus "Russian Mammoth") tuber has woken up right on schedule, even though it spent the winter in a basement refrigerator. The tuber started growing and the crown-bud had separated from the decaying original roots. In future years I'll trim old roots far more severely for over-winter storage. I planted both at the edge of my yard where they should get sufficient sunlight. I should have a couple days before they grow to above ground level, so I really need to figure out a method to protect them from deer. Once they get tall enough, the deer shouldn't be a real danger for them... but how tall that is still needs to be determined. I didn't photograph the holes they went into... but I will definitely take photographs of when they come up. The larger one looks similar to some of Joseph's sunroots he has posted on HG. |
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Post by darrenabbey on Apr 27, 2015 9:57:07 GMT -5
The larger one looks similar to some of Joseph's sunroots he has posted on HG. I noticed this. The shape along with the increased seed set (also seen with my crosses) made me wonder if his plants were actually derived from H. annuus x H. tuberosus crosses. I suspect it would take some genome sequencing and bioinformatics research to sort out. I've pondered doing this step for my own crosses, to examine which traits are coming from which species, so it may get done eventually. |
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Apr 28, 2015 19:54:30 GMT -5
The larger one looks similar to some of Joseph's sunroots he has posted on HG. I noticed this. The shape along with the increased seed set (also seen with my crosses) made me wonder if his plants were actually derived from H. annuus x H. tuberosus crosses. I suspect it would take some genome sequencing and bioinformatics research to sort out. I've pondered doing this step for my own crosses, to examine which traits are coming from which species, so it may get done eventually. Thanks for mentioning that. It presents interesting possibilities. I have grown H. annulus and H. tuberosus in the same field for as long as I have been working with sunroots. Different species, so no worries. Ha!!! At 150 feet separation the single clone of sunroot didn't set enough seed to find. The year I crossed a commercial sunroot with the wild sunroots, a patch of annual sunflowers was about 50 feet away. Among the 8 F1 plants, 1 plant didn't produce any rhizomes and 1 plant was the seediest sunroot I've ever grown. I'm wondering if those two plants were tuberosus x annulus crosses? I also collected a LOT of (non-hybrid *) semi-improved feral seed which I think is more likely to have annual X sunroot crosses because it flowered earlier in the year when there were more annual sunflowers blooming. I suppose that it would be possible to sort out by controlled pollination tests... I'd expect that an inter-species hybrid (4n) pollinated by a sunroot (6n) would be sterile (5n) and thus seedless. The same way that an inter-species hybrid (4n) pollinated by an annual sunflower (2n) would be seedless (3n). But a sunroot (6n) pollinated by an annual sunflower (2n) would yield viable seeds (4n). A collaborator also grew some of the F1 plants for me, which are currently planted in the next row over from the ones I grew. So there is a chance that one or more of his plants might be tuberosus x annulus crosses. I suppose that I could screen the annual patch for germinating rhizomes. That's iffy though, because I have to move the sunroot bed every year so I don't get weeds mixed up with intentional plantings... Be running out of space eventually. It would simplify telling the difference to use the diploid annual species as the mother of the cross. Then any offspring that had rhizomes could be presumed to be tetraploid. *It's technically hybrid because sunroots are self-incompatible. By non-hybrid I mean not a commercial/feral cross. |
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Apr 28, 2015 22:01:13 GMT -5
I have many thousands of sunroot seeds that were grown in a field with sunflowers close by...
Woo Hoo!!!! I could plant thousands of possibly crossed seeds, and screen for tetraploid plants.
I'm in the midst of a particularly fickle and unsettled time right now, but if not this year, then maybe next.
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Post by darrenabbey on Apr 28, 2015 23:03:15 GMT -5
I have many thousands of sunroot seeds that were grown in a field with sunflowers close by... This suggests a cytoplasmic factor in H. annuus is problematic in the crosses. Woo Hoo!!!! I could plant thousands of possibly crossed seeds, and screen for tetraploid plants. Among my F1 hybrids, there was some variation in the distinct traits from both parents. I had one that I was certain was pure H. tuberosus right up until it flowered. The upshot of this is that though you can determine the hybrid nature of many of the F1s at early stages, there will be surprises (in probably both directions) where you can't. |
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Post by darrenabbey on Apr 28, 2015 23:31:56 GMT -5
I noticed this. The shape along with the increased seed set (also seen with my crosses) made me wonder if his plants were actually derived from H. annuus x H. tuberosus crosses. I suspect it would take some genome sequencing and bioinformatics research to sort out. I've pondered doing this step for my own crosses, to examine which traits are coming from which species, so it may get done eventually. Thanks for mentioning that. It presents interesting possibilities. I have grown H. annulus and H. tuberosus in the same field for as long as I have been working with sunroots. Different species, so no worries. Ha!!! At 150 feet separation the single clone of sunroot didn't set enough seed to find. The year I crossed a commercial sunroot with the wild sunroots, a patch of annual sunflowers was about 50 feet away. Among the 8 F1 plants, 1 plant didn't produce any rhizomes and 1 plant was the seediest sunroot I've ever grown. I'm wondering if those two plants were tuberosus x annulus crosses? I also collected a LOT of (non-hybrid *) semi-improved feral seed which I think is more likely to have annual X sunroot crosses because it flowered earlier in the year when there were more annual sunflowers blooming. According to bulbnrose.x10.mx/Heredity/sunflowerXchoke/sunflowerXchoke.html, tuber production is dominant in the F1s... but my own work indicates it isn't so simple. One of my F1s looked 100% H. tuberosus until flowering and had no tubers at all. The others were obviously hybrids from an examination of their leaves. I suppose that it would be possible to sort out by controlled pollination tests... I'd expect that an inter-species hybrid (4n) pollinated by a sunroot (6n) would be sterile (5n) and thus seedless. The same way that an inter-species hybrid (4n) pollinated by an annual sunflower (2n) would be seedless (3n). But a sunroot (6n) pollinated by an annual sunflower (2n) would yield viable seeds (4n). Indeed, though I would rather be able to avoid such relatively strenuous testing. A collaborator also grew some of the F1 plants for me, which are currently planted in the next row over from the ones I grew. So there is a chance that one or more of his plants might be tuberosus x annulus crosses. I suppose that I could screen the annual patch for germinating rhizomes. That's iffy though, because I have to move the sunroot bed every year so I don't get weeds mixed up with intentional plantings... Be running out of space eventually. It would simplify telling the difference to use the diploid annual species as the mother of the cross. Then any offspring that had rhizomes could be presumed to be tetraploid. *It's technically hybrid because sunroots are self-incompatible. By non-hybrid I mean not a commercial/feral cross. Screening the annual patch for germinating rhizomes would guarantee you'd find tetraploid hybrids, though some annual tetraploid hybrids could end up in the seed saved from year to year and make the situation more complicated. You'd only need a few patches to circulate through, so long as you could successfully rogue out the weeds from the previous cycle in the time a patch is fallow. |
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