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[email protected]

Joe & Doug got me thinking. Smell the smoke?

That's right. Seedless Atlantic Giants. Before the hate email starts. just hear me out on this.

935.0 Lloyd '97 X 865 Mettler '98

The all time Big Mama cross. The undisputed champion right? This crosses kids have produced more AG winners than any. Yet none that contained seed weighed more than 845 lbs. So what happened to the 1131 Checkon '99? Why did it weigh-in over 280 lbs heavier than it's siblings? We must accept that this cross has been one of the most consistant in the "other" area of concern that we have & that's progeny performance. I don't know of another cross that has allowed so many visits to the well that never ran dry.

528 Kuhn '03 - too soon to tell
714 Bobier '02 - 615 & 753. pretty good first year.
723 Bobier '99 UOW - no comment needed
838 Bobier '02 - 656,737,& 940. Not a bad first year.
845 Bobier '00 UOW - no comment
1131 Checkon - no seeds

My question then is this:

How many Oficially Weighed pumpkins have been discovered to contain few or no seeds that also happened to go over on the charts? Ot at least way over the expected weight that the parents track record would have implied.

And yes. If we want to induce a non-pollinated seedless AG, I think we can.

Steve

12/5/2003 8:44:05 AM

Deer Park, WI

Thats a good question, and it would be interesting to find a correlation there. There's a number of possibilities as to why the 1131 may have been seedless. They range from hybrid vigor to the weather conditions in '99. Unfortunately there's no way to pinpoint any particular reason at this point.

It would be nice to find out if parthenocarpic fruit influence fruit size. But its kind of hard to plant seeds from parthenocarpic fruit...:) The only way to reproduce a truly parthenocarpic fruit or plant would be by means of AG cloning, ala Madman Marc. Without evidence that there's any correlation tho leaves little incentive to take on a project like this.

It seems to have worked for grapes tho?

One possibility is to find a niche for Giant AG's, enough so that commercial industry finds an economical use for them, and dumps millions into research. However, by then we will have taken away the fun in our hobby. It would be lame to watch some industry giant engineer a 4000lb AG with scientific magic while most of us struggle to reach a paltry 1000lbs.

Not much to take away from this incessant babble. I bettter come up with something useful here.... ah nevermind

12/5/2003 9:42:17 AM

Morris, Connecticut

Neat thoughts. Unfortunately I don't think that inducing seedless AG's will result in bigger fruit. In most instances continued fruit growth is highly dependent on seed formation. It's actually been demonstrated in both apples and strawberries that increased seed number strongly affects fruit size. Consequently, most fruit that are produced through parthenocarpy (ie. seedless grapes, seedless watermelons) are much small in size than their relatives that are produced through normal pollination.

12/5/2003 9:57:15 AM

[email protected]

Could it be that an auxin rich substance (Seakelp or Seaweed extract maybe?) was inadvertantly applied to the female flower prior to the pollination? The night before or the same morning (sson after pollination) would probably have done it. If the lobes actually got hit that is.

If anyone knows Mr. Checkon (I do not), perhaps we could show him this thread or ask him directly.

12/5/2003 10:01:05 AM

[email protected]

Seedless cucmbers are usually smaller too. They don't have to be. That's the way the cultivars go. But when induced Pathenocarpy occurs in a large fruited plant, then the need for GA can be met by the grower. Commercially, Thompson's seedless grapes are sprayed up to 3 times to keep them growing & to prevent the fruit from falling off the cluster (a self defense trait to guard against sterility by the grape).

Since ultra large seedless fruit have little cash value, this isn't a goal of researchers. But if seedless fruit weigh heavy......

12/5/2003 10:05:45 AM

Stouffville

I thought the male pollinator chosen doesn't affect the fruit or physical seed development the same year, traits which I though were affected only by the genetics of the female. Isn't this the case or have there been new developments? I mean the 935 Lloyd grew a 1092 with seeds which is awfully close to 1131, but the pollinator was itself.

12/5/2003 10:37:18 AM

Western NY

interesting topic. the closest i've come to a seedless one was my 413.5, which only had 5 good seeds in it. perhaps not suprisingly, it's from the 935 lloys line, selfed over and over. actually 413.5= (291.5 wolf x self), 291= selfed 792 armstrong. 792= selfed 1092... you get the idea. it was, however, grown next to the plant that grew probably close to my next smallest seed count. this was on a 760 patrick plant, which has historically low mature seed counts. off the top of my head, the only other 2 pumpkins i've had with low seed counts were the 291.5 and the 468 est. the 468 should have been weighed, as it was incredibly thick. probably would have been over 500 pounds.

Andy

12/5/2003 11:42:02 AM

[email protected]

With respect to seedless Strawberries & other fruit I started poking around. Found a good abstract. Here's a clip:

Many fruit crops have fruits that develop only when ovules are present and fertilized. Pollination and fertilization increase the amounts of phytohormones in the ovary, stimulate cell division, and lead to fruit set and growth (Gillaspy et al., 1993 ). To produce seedless fruits, plant hormones such as auxin analogs (in the case of strawberries) or gibberellins (in cases such as apples, cucumbers, and eggplant), mutants capable of parthenocarpic development, or plants altered in their ploidy are typically used (Bukovac and Nakagawa, 1967 ; Robinson et al., 1971 ; Mapelli et al., 1978 ; Mazzucato et al., 1998 ).

12/5/2003 12:22:48 PM

southern MN

This all comes back to the sink and source topic.
Are the seeds a competing sink against the pumpkin "flesh"?
I know seeds account for weight of the pumpkin but do they require more energy to create the "denser" (if that is even a word) seed than the less dense (mostly water) pumpkin flesh.

If that is the case then yes less seeds would equal a larger pumpkin. Just my $.02

12/5/2003 1:23:44 PM

Cornwall UK.(50N 5W)300ft.

In the case of the few pumpkins that I have grown,the heavier they have been against the charts the fewer the number of seeds that there has been inside them.Could just be luck anyone else had this?

12/5/2003 1:33:50 PM

Montoursville, PA

My 410 from the 1061.5 TC was 10% heavy and produced 640 healthy plump seeds on a badly split stem. Opps that pumpkin could not read or understand English.

12/5/2003 3:01:15 PM