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On top of Brush Mountain, Pa.

Does anyone have any thoughts about how good an original seed is versus one that is selfed. By this I mean that if I grew a 723 Bobier and pollinated the female blossom with a male 723 from the same plant, how would the seeds from my self pollinated pumpkin compare with the original 723 seeds?

9/18/2005 7:27:30 PM

No Place Special

I think its a toss up. Dan Carslon and others have don 846 Cali X self that I think are as good as original. On the other hand I think some selfed seeds are junk.

9/18/2005 7:45:38 PM

SF Bay Area, California

I agree with Mike, it's a toss up but you do tend to make the genetics more consistant. The problem is that each seed in a pumpkin has genetic differences - different combinations of the two parent's genes. There is usually a few really good and a few really lousy combinations of genes in the seeds with the rest in between somewhere.

If you take one individual seed and self it, what you end up with depends entirely on the genetics in that particular seed. If it was a really good combination of genes in the seed, you will end up with a pretty consistantly good bunch of offspring. If was a dud set of genes, pretty much all of the offspring will be duds.... and so on.

Plus you increase the odds of bad recessive traits matching up and expressing themselves in the offspring. (like green, heh, heh)

So the seeds for a selfed pumpkin can produce very different results than seeds from from the parent. But, they will become more consistant genetically and produce less variation in their offspring.

vince

9/18/2005 8:21:11 PM

Saugerties N. Y.

Well I say this if you grew a a big boy on a X self I'm sure you'll be getting some calls for seeds. On the other hand if you keep using the same seeds from your pumpkins year after year without a cross you'll weaken your strain. Thats why it's good to cross pollinate especially if you like the pumpkins you been producing

9/18/2005 10:16:10 PM