Stacy, I was bummed out because it's so much harder to conserve a hybrid than it is to conserve an OP strain. With OP strains, you can just grow it and save the seeds.

With hybrid strains, you have to grow both parent strains, then somehow produce the F1 hybrid by pollinating the ovule parent with pollen from a different strain, while avoiding getting any pollen froim the ovule parent (can you say "female" parent with plants?)


>> But you could de-hybridize it.

Some people are patient enough to raise the F2, F3, F4, etc generations, selecting for the desired traits each year.

They uproot any plants that are noticeably "off" (rogue them out). That's if they can tell which plants are undesirable without seeing the mature melons!

They would like to select pollen from the plants that look most like the original, and hand-pollinate blooms on a plant that looks most like the original, and MARK that melon for ongoing propagation.

But I don't know how they know which plants to select, since you need to see the melons mature before you know which plant you should have selected. Maybe they can't do selective pollination, and have to wait for the harvest, then only save seeds from the best melons. But that goes slower than being able to select the few best plants before pollination.

After 4-7 years of this, they can often get a strain that is pretty stable, and mostly produces most of the desired traits when randomly crossed with itself (as long as you pay attention and "rouge out" anything that comes up funky). Stabilizing a hybrid like that is called "de-hybridizing", but it's a lot of work.

Thanks, Woofie! Great find. Stacy's grandfather-in-law scooped the seeds!

>> But it makes me think the word "hybrid" was possibly misused

My interpretation was that the seeds he was scooping came from the F1 fruits, growing on a P1 plant.

I think like so:

The pollen parent A fertilized a flower on the ovule parent B.
Both of these were "P1", parental strains, OP, and could be propagated by just saving seeds.

Next the ovule in that flower developed into a watermelon.
(Would that melon look like Parent B or like the 50-pound Schochler giant? I don't know.)

The seeds inside that watermelon are "F1": 50% genes from pollen A, and 50% genes from ovule B. Even though the plant is a P1 plant.

Next, Virgil scooped out the F1 seeds and Joe Palmer Schochler sold them all over the South, including to the Robert Buist Company, a seed distributor.

Then the F1 seeds were grown into huge braggin' melons by lots of happy people.

However, sadly for us, the seeds inside those big braggin' melons were the product of two F1 plants, not an A plant and a B plant. Hence they were "F2 hybrid" seeds, and probably had a random mix of A characteristics, B characteristics, Schochler characteristics, random intermediate traits and a few odd recombined traits.

BUT some lucky F1 hybrid varieties make F2 generations that are pretty close to the desired plants. You never know until you try. Like, some hybrid petunias "come pretty true" even if the F1 plants just pollinate each other promiscuously. But the seed vendors print "F1 Hybrid" in large letters and don't mention that you'll hardly tell the difference in the F2 generation.

If the F2 generation comes out "mostly pretty close" to the original 'Schochler', you might be able to get it "pretty stable" in fewer than five generations. And you could eat a lot of watermelon in the meanwhile!

Mike Dunton of Victory Seeds wrote back a very nice letter. I added the bold emphasis.


Hi There,

I am sorry to report that no, I do not have any of this variety in our seed bank nor do I know of a source. This is a common problem with many old varieties. Especially hybrids like the ‘Schochler’ watermelon is reported to be. There probably was one grower in the country, presumably Mr. Schochler, who raised the seed every year and sold in bulk to seed companies, like Robert Buist, who then marketed them. This is a common theme in the early 20th Century seed trade and varieties died out when the breeders died and their heirs had no interest in carrying on the work.

That said, it was reportedly quite a popular variety in the Southern US so there is a chance that someone out there saved seed, stabilized the variety and has an open-pollinated analog of the old hybrid. The problem is locating that person.

If you do locate it from a well-documented source, ideally through the Schochler family, I would be interested in helping to preserve the variety. As long as it can be stabilized as an open-pollinated variety.

Best of success to you in your search.

Best Regards,

Mike Dunton
-
Victory Seed Company
www.VictorySeeds.com
PO Box 192 - Molalla, Oregon - 97038

Naw, he was scoopin OP seeds! wishful thinking. Otherwise chances go way down for us to try and grow these braggin watermelons!

Well, I posted as you were posting so my hopes just flashed away!

Nice letter though!

Me too! (Edited to add - Also cross-posting and also thinking wishfully.)

I know that some people will call a OP strain "hybrid" if it came from some cross in recent memory. As in, it WAS a hybrid.

Now I'm going to commit a nomenclatural sin by suggesting that maybe the 'Schochler' watermelon is an "heirloom hybrid". Don't hit me!

I've also started eyeballing some big watermelons as I look through seed catalogs trying to find 'Schochler'. If someone did stablize / dehybridize Palmer's Pride, they might well have given it a new name, the better to market it themselves.

But often the process of stabilizing a hybrid will change some characteristics, so how would we know if something "similar" was closely related or not?

Contact Abby at NCIS and ask her to do some watermelon DNA comparisons? Like a paternity test! She might even be able to figure out what the two parental strains were.

abhege said:Woofie, that is so cool you found that! But it makes me think the word "hybrid" was possibly misused in the earlier description because if he was scooping out the seeds to save they wouldn't have been hybrid. That would be nice and really, make more sense.

I wonder if they could have been saving the seeds from the created Hybrid melons?

I agree with Patti.

- The melons that Virgil scooped,
- the seeds inside them that were sold all over the South,
- and the plants that grew from those seeds, were all the F1 generation.

The plants that Virgil's melons grew ON were the P1 generation.

The bragging melons that customers grew from sold seeds were F2 melons, and the seeds inside were F2 seeds, hence probably somewhat random.

The line between generations should be drawn between the plant and the fruit on the plant.
If a human mother is F1, the baby in her womb is F2.
\

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...


"F1 hybrid is a term used in genetics and selective breeding. F1 stands for Filial 1, the first filial generation seeds/plants or animal offspring resulting from a cross mating of distinctly different parental types.[1] The term is sometimes written with a subscript, as F1 hybrid.[2][3] The offspring of distinctly different parental types produce a new, uniform variety with specific characteristics from either or both parents. In fish breeding, those parents frequently are two closely related fish species, while in plant and animal genetics those parents usually are two inbred lines. Mules are F1 hybrids between horse and donkey. Today, certain domestic hybrid breeds, such as the Savannah cat, are classified by their filial generation number.

Gregor Mendel's groundbreaking work in the 19th century focused on patterns of inheritance and the genetic basis for variation. In his cross-pollination experiments involving two true-breeding, or homozygous, parents, Mendel found that the resulting F1 generation were heterozygous and consistent. The offspring showed a combination of those phenotypes from each of the parents that were genetically dominant. Mendel’s discoveries involving the F1 and F2 generation laid the foundation for modern genetics.

Production of F1 hybrids
In plants

Crossing two genetically different plants produces a hybrid seed (plant). This can happen naturally, and includes hybrids between two different species (for example, peppermint is a sterile F1 hybrid of watermint and spearmint). In agronomy, the term “F1 hybrid” is usually reserved for agricultural cultivars derived from two different parent cultivars. These F1 hybrids are usually created by means of controlled pollination, sometimes by hand-pollination. For annual plants such as tomato "hybrids" and "hybrid inbred" maize, F1 hybrids must be produced each season.

For mass-production of F1 hybrids with uniform phenotype, the parent plants have to have predictable genetic effects on the offspring. Inbreeding and selection for uniformity for a number of generations ensures that the parent lines are almost homozygous. The divergence between the parent lines promotes improved growth and yield characteristics in the F1 offspring through the phenomenon of heterosis ("hybrid vigour").

Two populations of breeding stock with desired characteristics are subject to inbreeding until the homozygosity of the population exceeds a certain level, usually 90% or more. Typically this requires more than ten generations. After this happens, both populations must be crossed while avoiding self-fertilization. Normally this happens in plants by deactivating or removing male flowers from one population, taking advantage of time differences between male and female flowering or hand-pollinating.[4]

In 1960, 99 percent of all corn planted in the United States, 95 percent of sugar beet, 80 percent of spinach, 80 percent of sunflowers, 62 percent of broccoli, and 60 percent of onions were hybrid. Beans and peas are not commercially hybridized because they are automatic pollinators, and hand-pollination is prohibitively expensive.
F2 hybrid

While an F2 hybrid, the result of self or cross pollination of an F1, does not have the consistency of the F1 hybrid, it may retain some desirable traits and can be produced more cheaply as no intervention in the pollination is required. Some seed companies offer F2 seed, particularly in bedding plants where consistency is not as critical.[5]"

I say we get Abby to do paternity tests!

localharvest.org came back with a "no", but they suggest asking their bulletin board, so I'll try that.

Talk about "heirlooms"! A bulletin board! That take me back to the time of 300 baud modems.

Baker Creek - - ?
SandHill - - - - - ?
SeedMan - - - - no, and a sample received last year did not germinate
- 2nd request to Jim: what farm sent those seeds? - - ?
SSE - - - - - - - - no
Victory Seeds - no, but interested in conserving IF it can be stabilized
localharvest.org - - no
Local harvest Forumn - - - ?
Sustainable Seed Company- - - - - - - ?
Texas Watermelon Association - - - - ?
Southern Exposure Seed Exchange - ?

Rick, thanks so much for doing the "legwork" here!

I'm having lots of fun. It's hugely more interesting than usual because Stacy's here.

And it feels as if Virgil, Joe Palmer and Robert Buist might be lurking and following the thread from beyond the horizon, cheering us on.

If it's completely unavailable commercially, and Stacy gets some from one of Dave's sons, I hope she and the family allow it to be propagated commercially again (either as a stabilized strain, or from both parent varieties.

I'm sure we would! and thanks! Y'all have no idea how fun this has been for me!

So off to a good start here at ATP! Yay!

Cool!

Jim at "SeedMan" said he will pass our request along to the farm that sent him some seeds last year (the seeds that didn't germinate in their field trial).

It has been very interesting... Genealogy/Gardening I want to grow it and know the family history behind it

RickCorey said:Me too! (Edited to add - Also cross-posting and also thinking wishfully.)

Contact Abby at NCIS and ask her to do some watermelon DNA comparisons? Like a paternity test! She might even be able to figure out what the two parental strains were.