Breeding plans that fail

General Fruit Growing
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I’m always involved in some kind of breeding program with plans to develop something better than the parents. Sometimes this is successful. Sometimes it fails miserably. This is my tale of a miserable failure.

I started crossing Fortex pole beans with a numbered line from ARS-Grin in 2013. The numbered line carried exceptional disease resistance against a broad range of fungal and bacterial disease plus it is very resistant to many common bean pests. My thought was to produce a Fortex class bean (11 inches long, superb green snap bean) with the disease tolerance from the numbered line. The first cross was successful though I was inexperienced in making crosses with bean flowers. I got exactly one hybrid seed which I planted a year later. The seed I saved were all from Fortex and I had a row over 100 feet long which all wound up as canned green beans except the progeny of that one single hybrid plant. I could tell it was a hybrid because Fortex has white flowers (recessive) and the numbered line has deep purple flowers (dominant) so when I saw a plant with purple flowers in the row of Fortex beans I knew one cross had made it. That one plant made several hundred beans. Those seed were the F2 from the cross. I would not see segregation until I grew them out the next year… and another year… and another year always looking for something unusual or interesting in the progeny. Finally about 6 years ago I found a few plants that produced nice slim long RED pods. Now we are getting somewhere!

So I saved seed from the red pods and grew them another year. A few of them made red pods and in a ratio that showed the trait could be stabilized. I saved seed from red pods and grew them again… and again this year. Now I know that the red pods are linked to two seriously bad traits. First, they produce relatively few flowers. Second, the bean pods are small, scimitar curved, and not very edible. They resemble the original numbered line and have very few of the edible bean traits of Fortex.

So now I have a pretty red pod bean that does not make many beans but is highly disease and pest resistant. There is zero value in releasing it for ordinary growers because it is too unproductive. The only value it has is if I can make another cross to bring useful traits into a better quality bean.

There you have it. 13 years of effort making the hybrid and growing out seedlings up to the F6 generation and there is nothing to show for it except a story of a bean that is not worth growing except possibly for making more crosses.

But this is not the only lesson from this story. Breeders make literally thousands of crosses looking just one offspring that is worth progagating. Think about the amount of work that goes into a new pecan variety where less than 1 in 10,000 results in a variety worth releasing.

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It is a pity they failed to set many flowers. We plant out Scarlet runners merely for the pollinators They could have been an interesting ornamental for pollinator attraction.

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I guess this post came at the right time cause here I was thinking I could try to create a new fig variety by just making 20 seedlings. :joy:

So you’re saying I’m going to have to win the baby (genetic) lottery? :expressionless_face:

Speaking of Red Beans. I have a little story to tell. So Burpees sells a Red Podded Yardlong Asparagus bean that I grew for the first time this year. It’s really special. It absolutely loves & thrives in summer heat. It produced so darn well… the only problem? The beans weren’t red. So I went on Burpees to double check if I had in fact bought the green version of the beans by accident. Nope, I purchased the red ones. The review section going back YEARS for the Red beans said that Burpees had given them the green beans instead. So either Burpees is screwing this up every single year or the Red Beans are reverting back to Green beans due to genetic instability?

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Lol, I have some actual RED yardlong beans in the freezer. They are just a variant of common cowpeas.

To give this perspective, I am going to release a new cowpea which Sandhill will sell next year. It is a result of crossing Colossus crowder pea with Piggott Family Heirloom. The objective was to bring the flavor and production of Piggott into a much larger cowpea. At the same time, there were some serious negative traits to select against. One of the negatives is that Colossus tends to produce a lot of short pods with only 8 or 10 peas. I want long full pods with 20 or more peas. So I finally have a very large speckled cowpea that tastes very good and makes long full pods of peas. Time to let others grow them!

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Oh, that sounds really nice. I’d like to try to grow that next season. So is this new crossing a vining variety? I have a trellis I made for the Asparagus bean. I’d grow it on that if it vines.

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It is a rampant vining cowpea meaning I wished this year it did not grow as long as it did. We had extremely high rainfall with about 60 inches of rain between April 1st and July 15th. Beans, cowpeas, okra, and watermelons go bananas when they get that much rain. I had a row of tomatoes beside the cowpeas with 8 foot T-posts as stakes. The cowpeas climbed the T-posts and have huge cones of peas which I am now picking and shelling.

Here are a few pictures. The first shows four green mature cowpeas on the left next to the lead pencil. There are some nearly dry cowpeas in the middle and then 2 normal size dry cowpeas on the right. Pencil and lighter are to give perspective.

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Here are the peas that came out of 3 of the pods on the left. Note the size and the speckling. The speckling becomes more pronounced as they dry.

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Consider the serial numbers from the UCR fig breeding program: UCR rrr-ttt, where rrr is the row number and ttt is the tree number. Both range into the hundreds. The total is over 50,000. How many have value today? About a dozen.

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That’s my setup essentially. 8ft t-posts with horizontal runs of galvanized wire connected to jaw/eye turnbuckles with Wire Rope Clamps & Wire Rope Thimbles securing the wires to the turnbuckles. Then mesh netting over the galvanized wire. Ground Anchors at the end t-posts to prevent the t-posts from sagging inwards. I can snake the vining cowpeas horizontally with UV resistant adjustable zip ties to maximize the entire footprint of the netting.

If Sandhill has it available in 2027 I might just look into it for growing. :smiley:

Whew, now that’s not good odds for me. But I do play the Powerball lottery every time it gets up towards $1 billion. Looks like my odds are much better doing the Fig seedlings compared to that. :smiley:

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Seed will likely be limited. I’m doing another round of culling now selecting only the plants that make the biggest cowpeas with the most peas per pod and the highest production. I’ll do secondary selection when I shell them to exclude any peas that don’t show the speckling. These will be F6 seed which is stable enough considering they are a “population” and not just the offspring of a single plant. There will be a lot of variation - deliberately retained - in order to enable them to adapt to different climates. Barring incident, Glenn will have enough seed for about 1000 seed packs.

The hardest trait of all to stabilize is the large size. Even after 6 generations I still have a lot of plants producing small pods. Best guess is that large size is based on 2 genes working in tandem to increase pea size. If either of the genes is missing the result is a smaller cowpea. Even the small ones are still larger than most ordinary cowpeas so it is not necessarily a bad thing to have them, but they are NOT what I have been selecting for.

Please note, I’m obviously biased, but these cowpeas are good enough that IMO they meet criteria for AAS. (All America Selection)

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Can you provide what you have named them, so we could possibly order this winter?

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CRISPR is a technology you can alter the properties of almost anything. I’m not sure how advanced it is at this stage, most likely it will only be available to alter human DNA.
If any one has a contact with someone working in such a facility it will be interesting to hear what they say.

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Very interesting Darrel, I wish that I had the time and knowledge to do that kind of stuff.
I thought about playing with the Scarlet Emperor bean, try to eliminate the smaller, solid black and solid white seeds. Only keeping and growing out the largest black and purple speckled seeds.

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  1. First, you need to know which loci are responsible for the property you desire to alter.
  2. CRISPR is no longer the leading technology for genetic modification.
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Breeding a disease resistant Fortex was a worthy goal. I stopped growing it due to BCMV susceptibility.

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Cool to what company is this tech associated with? I have lots of investment cash to play with.

I have had tons of good luck with breeding. Here one of three primocane fruiting purple raspberries I developed. This is one plant two canes and a few laterals. Quite productive. Berries taste amazing like boysenberries but much sweeter.

Very productive for primocane fruit photo taken yesterday. I love black and purples in September .

These canes get to about 7 feet but one of my others produces 9 foot canes. Plant was developed 4 years ago I have yet to see commercial release of primocane purples. This one is probably virus infected by now. Although it has some very virus resistant blacks in its lineage

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fun read, nice to read about the failures. i keep my breeding projects quite modest, mostly stabelizing different f1 hybrids that alread yhave nice traits. Working on love gourmansun sunrise which is going ok so far! Ive grown out only about 15 plants each generation, and i’m on gen 4 now. of the 3rd gen half were extremely stunted, 4th gen more like 3/4. hoepfully thats moving the needle and not just random chance with our genetics. but we’re keeping the large size, low gel, and great flavor so far. as for diseases maybe in a few seasons i’ll send them out to places with more disease pressure for testing.

I would love to get in on the red flesh peach and nectarine breeding train, theres such little variation!

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value is entirely subjective, meaning no two people will ever assign the exact same worth to a specific plant. take male fig trees, for example: most people do not value them, yet a select few value them highly. another perfect example is the ucr citrus breeding program, which never officially released the cocktail grapefruit because it was deemed incredibly seedy. the only reason we even know it exists is because someone snuck it out, allowing it to spread through sharing and sales. i’ve tasted it myself, and yes, it is definitely super seedy, but it’s also incredibly juicy and delicious. for myself and many others, seediness isn’t a dealbreaker at all. in fact, when a fruit is that delicious, the more seeds it has, the better.

this fundamental truth—that one person’s trash is another person’s treasure—carries some basic but profound implications. i can only decide a plant’s value for myself. by extension, a plant’s true value to society can only be determined by each and every person within society. therefore, a plant’s overall social value is simply the sum total of its personal value to everyone.

this highlights a major flaw in traditional selection: when a fig breeder in southern california destroys thousands of unique seedlings, they are destroying plants that might have been the best existing rootstock for rkn resistance in florida, the most cold-tolerant variety in pennsylvania, or the most blight-resistant variety in japan. no single person can possibly test the usefulness of every genetic trait across every environmental condition.

any breeder who deems a perfectly healthy seedling to be worthless and destroys it is robbing society of so much potential. culling is fine, and even necessary, as long as it solely involves sharing or selling the unwanted seedlings so others can test their worth.

this is exactly why markets are so effective: breeders are not the ultimate “graders” of their own work. regardless of how cool, exciting, rare, wonderful, desirable, valuable, or precious i might perceive my own fig hybrids to be, it is entirely up to each individual consumer, with their distinct preferences and specific environmental conditions, to judge for themselves just how useful my creations are. the market “grades” aren’t “thumbs up” or “hearts” or “votes”—they are money. spending money requires a personal sacrifice, which is exactly what makes these “grades” a credible, honest signal of value. the better my market “grades”, the more land and talent i can successfully compete away from other uses to further my fig breeding. if we truly understand, respect, and trust this inclusive process of discerning social value, then it becomes incredibly clear just how counterproductive it is for breeders to overrule or override this powerful process by destroying perfectly healthy seedlings.

all else being equal, if mulberry breeders destroy perfectly healthy seedlings by the tens of thousands, while fig breeders spread all their culls around, then figs and their fans will ultimately win. there will simply be a much larger pool of genetic material for people and nature to select from. if the climate changes drastically, figs will adapt faster. if people’s preferences drastically shift—such as suddenly preferring more sour fruit or wanting to grow fruit indoors—figs will adapt faster to those new demands, too. when we start colonizing space, fig seeds will rank way above mulberry seeds, and when we finally meet an advanced alien civilization, they will be willing to make considerably larger personal sacrifices for fig seeds than for mulberry seeds. all because fig breeders didn’t squander potential, unlike mulberry breeders.

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The red Chinese yard long beans from Baker Creek have been red for me. Gorgeous and delicious!

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any breeder who deems a perfectly healthy seedling to be worthless and destroys it is robbing society of so much potential. culling is fine, and even necessary, as long as it solely involves sharing or selling the unwanted seedlings so others can test their worth.

I understand the sentiment, but I would offer a different perspective of why that isn’t necessarily the case.

First, it is absolutely true that all breeders can only select for a limited number of traits at a given time. Selections are influenced by the breeders personal perspective, goals, and the environment in which he/she is doing the selection. It is absolutely true that a plant that performs poorly in one region, can, on occasion, perform well in another region, or for someone selecting based on different criteria.

So why do breeders practice culling aggressively instead of putting effort on spreading all their seedlings around?

It comes down to the fact that in plants, generating seedlings is rarely the constraint on developing new varieties. Almost always, the constraint is in the evaluation and data collection stage.

For example, let’s say I make a cross in grapevine, and grow out 1000 vines from seed. After testing, let’s say I find 5-6 that I feel have some promise, based on my selection criteria, and are worthy of further testing in my environment. The rest would typically be outright culls, and maybe another 5-10 might be worth saving for breeding purposes due to an outstanding characteristic or two.

Now I could, theoretically, send those 1000 seedlings to someone else, and it’s possible some of the individuals that were culls in my environment might do better in someone else’s environment. The problem is, there is a very limited number of people who have the interest in growing out a thousand seedlings for testing on any species, and in that small group of people, most would rather grow out seedlings from their own crosses with parents they like rather than sort through seedlings that are rejects of someone else in a different environment.

It’s much easier for me to say, here are the 5-10 seedlings out of the thousand I grew that seem to be best in my environment, with my selection criteria, and get people to just trial those limited numbers, than to get people to trial everything, including the failures, in their location.

That, in a nutshell, is the reason why breeders of every species have always culled heavily and only send out a limited amount of material for testing.

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I can grow thousands of pecan or walnut trees a year. Planting, cultivating, and growing them for 20 years to evaluate them is where the work has to be done.

The pecan breeding program in Texas selects pecans for evaluation with typically under 20 selected per year. They distribute those selections for evaluation by cooperators in other states. There was a pecan picked for evaluation about 40 years ago that was sent out and grown across the south. The results were that it was mediocre at best, not adapted, poor producer. But in the Kansas experiment station, it was a star performer. It had the right seasonal adaptation and it produced a heavy annual crop of excellent quality pecans. Based on the exceptionally good results in Kansas, that pecan was released even though it failed in all other areas. We grow it today as Kanza.

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