Accidental Cross vs Sport vs Instability

[Cole_Robbie]

I had a few seeds come up that were a little different than expected. Some of them could be labeling errors, but assuming they are not....

If a seed has been accidentally crossed, whatever trait has been crossed in should show up at a minimum of 25% in the next generation? Is that right? I have one Fatali pepper that has purple leaves, but only one out of about two dozen plants. Maybe my sample size is too small?

With my tomatoes, I had one Sweet Sue come up RL and not PL. I also had a New Big Dwarf that is obviously not a dwarf. Are these "sports?" Or do the varieties just lack a tiny fractional percentage from being 100% stable? Or is that the same thing?

[TC_Manhattan]

Originally Posted by Cole_Robbie

I had a few seeds come up that were a little different than expected. Some of them could be labeling errors, but assuming they are not....

If a seed has been accidentally crossed, whatever trait has been crossed in should show up at a minimum of 25% in the next generation? Is that right? I have one Fatali pepper that has purple leaves, but only one out of about two dozen plants. Maybe my sample size is too small?

I have a thought to add to your puzzlement: if you're counting percentages of f2 offspring with a certain trait, would not the f2 sample lot need to be from the same fruit? What I'm getting at is that different fruits (flowers) from the same plant could very likely have cross-pollinated with different cultivars. If you've sown a mixed lot of seeds from different fruits, the percentage controls could end up giving statistically contaminated results.

Oh my!

[Cole_Robbie]

good point

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by TC_Manhattan

I have a thought to add to your puzzlement: if you're counting percentages of f2 offspring with a certain trait, would not the f2 sample lot need to be from the same fruit? What I'm getting at is that different fruits (flowers) from the same plant could very likely have cross-pollinated with different cultivars. If you've sown a mixed lot of seeds from different fruits, the percentage controls could end up giving statistically contaminated results.

Oh my!

Correct.

It's been shown with tomatoes that up to 4 cross pollinations can occur on one plant, different blossoms, and that happens when self pollenization is not complete so that the ovarys still have room for extra fertilizations.

I can't speak to peppers since decades ago I started growing lots of peppers ,both cold and hot, and given the specific species,they cross with abandon and no way was I going to construct fine mesh cages to help prevent that.

Carolyn

[bower]

If I found one RL in a batch of PL's I would think a crossed seed is the more likely. Since an F1 cross with an RL parent would come up RL.
If you grow it out and fruit is identical to Sweet Sue then, maybe a sport.
Grow it and see, is the only way to figure out what happened.
Also with New Big Dwarf, not-dwarf is dominant to dwarf. So in an accidental cross, the F1 generation will not be dwarfs, if one parent is not a dwarf.

Re: 25%, you're thinking of F2 generation and recessive traits. In the F1 - first generation of the cross - the dominant traits will show in all of the crossed seedlings, that is any dominant trait in one of the parents. - RL, indeterminate, red, etc etc.