Tom's interesting potato work thread

[Fusion_power]

Tom,

Would you mind posting some info about some of the potato crosses you are working with and the resulting seedlings?

I'd love to read about your work and where it is going.

Thanks,

Fusion

[Tom Wagner]

Would you mind posting some info about some of the potato crosses you are working with and the resulting seedlings?

Fusion,

I will be starting my 54th year (season) of saving potato seed (TPS). Hope to get another 30-40 years in yet.

Hybrid crosses each year vary. I made over 1700 different crosses during the 2005 season, slightly fewer in 2006.

My primary selection of clones to be used in the breeding blocks are those that often produce berries on their own. The assumption then is that they will have obvious ease in using them as female parents, slightly less as pollen parents. Outstanding tuber lines are test crossed to ascentain crossibility.
Yukon Golds, for example, may not always flower profusely, therefore I use it as a pollen parent. Sometimes I have to walk through a hundred acre field just to find enough flowers to obtain pollen for my limited crosses.

I have many favorite male parents each year and I am always adding new lines to my favs. The past season included Kern Toro, Tom Kaighin, Nordic October, Thumb Dinger, Azul Toro, NY 131, Awol Dude, Mn 18747, Lump O'Gold, Negro y Azul, Skagit Valley Gold, Cyklops, just to name a few off the top of my head.

I'll take a jigger of pollen down a row of multiple varieties and cross a cluster of flowers (2-15) after removing the anthers. I string tag it with the info and move on to the next clone. I may use this pollen for up to a hundred clonal crosses.

New and interesting clones are singled out mostly for female parents.

Even after all the tetraploid X tetraploid, tetraploid X diploid, diploid X diploid, interspecific, intraspecific crosses are made, I look for (OP) open pollinated berries which will include many chance hybrid couplings as well.

I extracted recently 50 lbs. of berries from 40 hills of my Awol Dude clone. This is a vigorous red skinned, deep yellow flesh tuber line that was a single seedling the year before. This is one of my rare diploid X tetraploid lines. The female parent delivered an unreduced gamete in the fruiting ovule to be fertilized with the tetraploid pollen. The clone has 48 chromosomes. Using a Punnet Square, the possibilities are almost endless in the segregants. How much would that plant? About 10 acres of transplants!

I look at tens of thousands of new seedlings in order to make "smart" crosses. Add to this hundreds of heirloom varieties from all over the globe, experimental lines from various breeders, named varieties that are available, wild species, and odd assortment of potatoes chosen for trials.

I might take the time to list a random group of hybrids just for the fun of it. But later, please.

Tom