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Tobacco is EZ to breed and hybridize

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BaccaChew

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I would love to see a thread on the technique you used to make your specific crosses.
bob
If you watch a plant flower, you will get a sense for when the seed-bearing plant (I used Monte Calm yellow) will open the next day. So what you need to do is the night before a flower opens, you open it a little carefully with tiny scissors or your fingers. Pull or cut off the anthers that are yet un-dehiscing (not giving powdery pollen). Tweezers are a handy tool. That leaves you with a female part that will be ready for pollination the next day. You can either use a little masking tape to pinch the flower shut, or perhaps a paper clip that has been adjusted for the purpose, or make yourself a little light paper tube to slip over the flower to keep out all stray pollen and insects.

Next morning you come along with some of the male anthers (I used freshly opened glauca), shedding pollen, you want to use and touch them all over that little center female part you left the night before. Close the flower back up or use your paper apparatus for a few days, and bobs your uncle!

I have bred squash before too, and it is not very different than breeding tobacco, other than the size of the flowers and resulting fruits! LINK

Not really related to backyard breeding, but interesting to a breeder:
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Where it gets really interesting is the prospect of anther culture or pollen culture to obtain haploid plants that need doubling. Doubled ahploids will breed absolutely true if no random mutations occur and could be used to make super-uniform hybrids.

Another feature of haploid plants is that what you see is what you get. There can be no underlying "crap genes" because all genes are expressed in the haploid plant.
 

FmGrowit

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Interesting. So is the outcome of your experiments completely random?...or is there any way to predict which traits will be exchanged and which are eliminated from the new strain? Are you trying to attain a specific trait in the new strain?
 

BaccaChew

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Interesting. So is the outcome of your experiments completely random?...or is there any way to predict which traits will be exchanged and which are eliminated from the new strain? Are you trying to attain a specific trait in the new strain?
I did the tobaccum x glauca cross decades ago just "to see"! I had nobody to advise me of anything. Sometimes we do things out of curiousity.

The resulting hybrids were quite uniform, I grew some out. The weedy glauca seems pretty homozygous, (very little variation,) and the cross was uniform. So nothing really random about it. The seeds were developed on the Monte Calm mommy, and the resulting plants were frost tolerant just like the glauca.

Predicting traits: If you see a trait you like, you can self the plant and hope to increase either the frequency and/or intensity of said trait. I once grew out a bunch of white flowers and noticed one of them had a smidge of a hint of pink in it. I saved that selfed seed, growing it out the following year. Saw more and more pink over time until I believe the strain gave up all traces of white and became a flourescent pink (5 summers worth of selections). That gene was lurking in quite a large population of otherwise bland individuals, and I caught it visually. Now if we just had special glasses for nicotine! Or an easy field assay.

If I did develop my own strain of chewing tobacco, I would be breeding for high nicotine, interesting flavors, size, yield, and maturable in a relatively short summer. I feel these are all attainable, but it would help immensley to start with basic building blocks like some fast strain, a tasty strain, a potent strain etc. Eventually bring all the good things together into one or two seedlines.
 

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Anticipating the results of a cross is an extremely complicated subject. In short it includes an understanding as well as an outright discovery of recessive and dominant traits. But in a simplified method you simply pick plants with the traits you desire and breed that plant hoping for the best. Results may be random and may not be. as you go you should begin to notice traits that seem to carry over easily and others that do not. This is the beginning of discovering dominant and recessive genes. With enough time and effort you can actually come up with completely predictable crosses. For example to get a grey chicken you might think you would breed a white to a black. makes since. But in practice and due to the effect of not all genes are equal. you actually cross a black with a white and black chicken. White is a stronger gene so in effect it is diluted to produce a grey.

It also works best to select plants for just one specific trait and breed to develop that. then you can use those plants to cross with plants of another desired trait. you can have several breeding programs going at one time but each needs to focus on a single trait only.

Keep in mind that when it comes to genetics Universities have been spending decades trying to map the genetics of many things.

another way to get a good long lasting cross is to cross one plant with a desired trait to another plant that has the same desired trait. this helps because you are adding diversity to the gene pool as you do this. you may also produce offspring that have completely lost the desired trait. so self pollinate some of the seed pods as well. cross those offspring that appear to have none of the traits you where looking for and they may reappear and be permanent. very very complicated subject.
 
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deluxestogie

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It could be worse. At least tobacco is not mobile. Once, while I was examining the inherited traits of some tediously crossed fruit flies (for a genetics course), my F2 generation suddenly woke up from their ether anesthesia and flew away. Gregor Mendel had it right. Work with plants.

Bob
 

BaccaChew

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It could be worse. At least tobacco is not mobile. Once, while I was examining the inherited traits of some tediously crossed fruit flies (for a genetics course), my F2 generation suddenly woke up from their ether anesthesia and flew away. Gregor Mendel had it right. Work with plants.

Bob
Good one Bob! One very ill-timed sneeze could mess up a poorly kept seed collection too!

So your PhD just flew out the window!
 

BaccaChew

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What Daniel said!

Yes it is a crap shoot, but so are these "Chobie Gold" seeds!

I thought at the minimum I would self the phat, squat plant with huge leaves, and the 6 foot tall plant with huge leaves that taste kinda like they want to make a knockoff version of Beechnut.

Maybe grow the seeds from the tall one out next summer and look for a decent GreenWood to cross it to. Whatever, it is all an interesting journey.
 

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I have 50 Chobie Gold plants growing in my patch, they are about knee high. This si my first attempt at growing.
 

deluxestogie

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Welcome to the forum, vinman. If you'll add your location to your user profile (click My Profile, in the upper right), other members will be better able to orient on what you're growing and where.

If you get a chance, post a picture of your Chobie Gold. Do they differ in size and shape from one another?

Bob
 

BaccaChew

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If you get a chance, post a picture of your Chobie Gold. Do they differ in size and shape from one another?

Bob

I'll volunteer my phentypes: large wide leafs, narrow strappier leafs, tall plants, very short compact plants. Some with pink lipped flowers, others yellow only.

I was trying to grow 50 of them, but soon found out what damping off was. Down to 12 plants, but they are healthy. Perhaps I have selected for damping off resistance?

Also, the miracle grow soil I used to start them did me no favors. I am certain that is the wrong media to start with, after reading this forum for awhile.
 

BaccaChew

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The spouse unit understands how to take digiphotoes and post them. I will try to get some pics taken and posted later this fall.

This morning the air was extremely calm, so I did some controlled pollinating (on a 6 foot ladder!). Tweezers were the tool of the day. after pollinating a 1 inch piece of scotch tape sealed the bunched up flower tip (on the selfed flowers), blocking access to random, pollen laden bugs and windborn pollen.

The previous day I scissored off the last 3/8 inch or so of the unopened flower that was ready to open the next day (outcrossing in mind here). Anthers had not shed any pollen, and they were plucked with tweezers and discarded. Speaking of the seed bearing plant being used as a female here.

Decided that all unmarked pods could be considered selfed seeds. Any outcrosses were labeled on the pod with a small dot of spousal unit red fingernail polish. An entry into my tobacco chronicles describing the polish color, date, and plant completed the clerical work. It may be hard to remember just what all happened in a month or two if notes are not made.

Make sure to wash tweezers in between pollen types. That would be a source of pollen contamination.
 

BaccaChew

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is there any way to predict which traits will be exchanged and which are eliminated from the new strain? Are you trying to attain a specific trait in the new strain?

Pretty sure the very short plants will not yield tall progeny when bred together. That is not likely the case when addressing the taller plants as the short genes could be lurking as recessive. Growing out the selfed tall plants will tell alot about the original tall plant that got selfed.

Hopefully I can concentrate the flavor gene that I tasted. So I self that plant. That will definitely be grown out next year, looking for more appearances of flavor.

If an individual plant gives me a strong buzz, that will be noted and more attention paid in that direction, since I lack the assay laboratory to give me absolute numbers. pays to sample green green leaves all summer!

My dream strain would be Beechnut-good backy right off a whole dried plant, whose seed would come up at the appropriate time in spring all by itself, from seed left on the ground the previous summer! I have tomatoes that do that, so why not backy?!

That is what I am working toward.
 
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