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Question about hybrid vegetables (lemmy.ca)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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If hybrids produce seeds that aren’t ‘true-to-type’, then how do they keep making the same ones every year?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Seeds of many species, when stored correctly, can still germinate for decades. I have used seed that was 30+ years old several times before.

Breeders produce inbred parental lines by self-pollinating for 5-8 generations (or double-haploid creation).

They then do a small initial seed increase by bulking a generation. Bulking refers to combining the seeds from several plants (I used nethouse with 24 cantaloupe plants and a small young queen honeybee hive inside to produce 0.5-1kg of seed).

This is called basic or breeder seed. This lot is tested for genetic uniformity and seedborne diseases. It's also used for small hybrid seed productions to test out the inbred.

Breeder seed is increased again and bulked to make foundation seed (around 50kg for cantaloupes) This is used to make the first commercial production of the hybrid. It is then increased yet again to produce stock seed (500kg)

Stock seed is what the commercial hybrid is produced from for the rest of its life. Foundation seed is used to produce more stock seed as needed.

The breeder seed and foundation seed are stored carefully to prolong it's life. The stock seed is in the general warehouse with the hybrid seed.

As long as they maintain quality control during the inbred increase process, the resulting hybrid will always be essentially the same.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

Oh that’s amazing that they can get the same results each time. Like if my wife and I tried to make 8 children that all looked the same that would be impossible.