Creating a Red Fruited Heavy Hitter Okra variety

[hedgeapple]

Jul 1, 2023 17:01:19 GMT -6 Tucson Grower said:

I had gone back out and checked over every plant in the first two rows and also discovered 2 pods of HH x SIR that were ripe and beginning to split open. I collected them, too.

Edit: Update; I've now cleaned and dried the potentially F1 seed. I'm concerned that some of the seed from all the pods were undersized. They still look mature, just much smaller then a usual okra seed. Of course, the majority are the size I'm most familiar with (about the size of a small pea). I was just wondering what might be the cause of this. I'm thinking the most likely cause, is their growing conditions, and that they're being grown, for the first time, in such a hostile environment.

As long as the seeds have matured long enough to develop a normal looking seed coat, I wouldn’t be concerned about their relative size. I haven’t noticed any obvious relationship between okra seed size and their germination rate or viability. Age and storage conditions seem to be the only thing that really matters there.

My newly created F1s last year resulted in the largest okra seeds I have ever seen and their plants this year are performing consistent with hybrid vigor while the F2s near them, which had much smaller seed, are doing just fine all things considered.

[Tucson Grower]

Thanks hedgeapple for sharing those seed observations. That's very helpful to me.

Earlier, this morning I made lots of cross-pollinations. In the first two rows, just HH x SIR; and in the second two rows, just HH x FQR. Then, a little later I went back out and checked for more ripe seedpods, I found another HH x SIR was ready to harvest. I moved them from the pod, to a paper envelope, to let them dry. This batch were all very nicely plump and of a uniform size.

I noticed that the hog ring connecting a colored plastic label to the base stalk of each seedpod, sometimes interferes with the easy removal of the pods, sometimes causing the nearest leaf to be trimmed off, too. Not too bad of an issue.

I also spritzed a mixture of neem oil, dish detergent, and water on the plants at the row ends, to see if that helps protect them from the grasshoppers.

[Tucson Grower]

I have decided, for now, to focus on using F1 seed collected from HH mother plants, where SIR and FQR are the pollen donors. That way I can more certainly determine if the plants are true F1 progeny rather than unintentional self-pollinations or inter-varietal crosses. If the seedlings show more color than any typical HH plant. it's most likely they're of hybrid origins.

[hedgeapple]

@tucson grower

Are you pollinating the flowers just once? I have noticed that during their most pollen receptive hours of the morning my flowers can absorb more than one coating of pollen an hour or so apart. I do that to try to maximize seed numbers and while I have not done a control test against single pollination I usually end up with pods full of seed.

[Tucson Grower]

I've been using sharpie darkened pointy ended cotton swabs. And if there are more than one pollen donor plant, I've been coating mother-plant stigma's with a coating of one donor's pollen, then the other, but I haven't really done that with any time lag, other than the few mintes it takes to accomplish that. I've read that one pollen grain can potentially fertilize 33 ovules, so I wasn't too concerned about seed count, besides, as it is I'll probably have 100's of times more seed than I'll ever be able to use. I plan to keep germinating F1 seed, until I get a good stand of plants that show the color trait I'm aiming for, then grow them out to determine which ones show the secondary traits I'm aiming for, then start crossing the best, with each other, before deciding which to keep for the F2 generation. That way I'll have prime F2 seed, and sub-prime F2 seed, in case the prime F2 seed disappoints. That way I'm hoping to have something to fall back on, in case the first batch of F1 plants doesn't make the cut. I can always go back to recreate the F1, if I have too, but there should be a sufficient supply of F1 seed from this first go-'round to plant some for several years. I'm also planning to expand my F1 planting to a plot at my second property, 18 miles away, in Marana. I'd have my brother, who lives there, tend the plants for me.

[Tucson Grower]

I've now harvested nine seedpods of HH x SIR and five seepods of SIR x HH. One to three, have become ripe, per day. I'm sure that some of them acquired stray pollen from non-target varieties. Since, at the time these were pollinated, SIR was the only red variety that was blooming, HH x SIR, with HH as the maternal parent, would produce highly red seedlings, only if the pollen donor were of SIR origins. So germinating those seed, and selecting only those seedlings exhibiting lots of red pigmentation, would be my best option to produce a crop of 100% F1 progeny. I already, likely, have plenty of F1 seed (several hundred), though there are many more maturing seedpods of HH x SIR, to add even more potential F1 seed to my collection (there are a few seedpods where both HH and SIR were pollinated between exceptional specimens, of each, with the goal of creating [land races], where they are better adapted to my local conditions). 

Now, I planted a few single HH plants into individual pots, both 15 and 25 gallon. In every instance these plants are easily out-performing any plant, planted in the ground. They were, initially backup plants, which spent too much time crowded into tiny pots, where the lack of space dwarfed them. Despit that, as soon as they were planted into their larger pots, they quickly outgrew all other HH plants, even those who had been growing in the ground for months.

For undetermined reasons, there is great variation between plants planted in the ground. Most likely it is unseen competition between nearby native trees and bushes, mostly creosote bushes, mesquite and ironwood trees. Their roots can reach a great distance from the trees, themselves, and they are voracious for water and nutrients. I just might leave the FQR out of this project - about 1/2 of them are dwarf, while the other half are normal internode spacing, or nearly so. Another 50/50 are either red or deep purple. I will keep the material, the HH x FQR, F1 seed, just in case I change my mind, later.

[Tucson Grower]

For some unknown reason, I can't get any of my freshly harvested okra seed to germinate. Do they need a resting period? The seed look fine, but just don't seem ready to grow.

[heavyhitterokra]

Tucson,

I don't know about other varieties of okra, but mine (developed from Clemson Spineless) will sprout inside the pod in the Fall of the year, after a soaking rainstorm. I've lost lots of seed that way in years past when we get warm, Autumn rains that last for days on end.

Have you tried germ. testing a few of them in a zip lock bag with a wet paper towel inside?  I've had that fail too, if my wife has anything to do with setting the thermostat.  She likes to keep our house cold enough to hang meat.  That makes me crazy sometimes, as I like to spend a lot of time working outside where it's hot, then I come inside the house and have to put on a jacket to keep warm.

I have to keep my okra seeds on a heating pad or else carry them in my shirt pocket to keep them warm enough to germinate inside our house.

[woodeye]

I've never tried the shirt pocket method, although I have read that you do that, heavyhitterokra. I use the ziploc bag method just like your instructions say, then place the ziploc bag directly on the kitchen floor in front of the bottom of the refrigerator. The warm air that blows out from there is just right to make them germinate, at least it works great for me. This year all the okra seeds germinated within 24 hours with that method. Any seeds that I want to germinate in a ziploc bag have worked fine, regardless of whether it's okra, squash, beans, etc. 

[heavyhitterokra]

Using the Zip lock bag with a moist paper towel inside was George's idea.  It has seldom failed me, unless I let my seeds get too cold.  I almost forgot about that warm spot located on top of the hot water tank. That's another good place to germinate seeds.

[Tucson Grower]

Okay, the first dozen HH hosted seedpods of crosses with FQR have just been harvested. Unfortunately these are primarily crosses with very dwarf FQR plants. There are nearly as many FQR plants (likely an unintentional cross), which are not dwarf, which appear more like SIR, but with varying shades of red, some, even with mottled cream and red fruits (not breeding with those). I'm trying to focus on breeding with the darker colored, non-dwarf FQR plants, but am having difficulty with the timing of their blooming and the blooming of adjacent HH plants. I should probably trim/discard some of the HH x dwarf FQR seedpods to inspire blooms I can pollinate with non-dwarf FQR plants. At worst, those non-dwarf FQR plants are only carrying one gene for the dwarf trait, half of the work towards eliminating it from the developing new variety.

I realize, now, that it shouldn't be too hard to eliminate the dwarf genes from this developing strain. If I do choose to include FQR in this varieties lineage, all I need do, is have one filial generation consist only of self-pollinated seedpods, then eliminate any plants, grown from those seed, that exhibit the dwarf trait.

[hedgeapple]

Tucson Grower

You’ll have no shortage of options once you get to your F2 generation. My F2s this year are all a little different with one decidedly dwarf plant (none of the parents were dwarf varieties), one giant branching plant, and everything in between. Major differences in plant and pod color and texture. It’s easy to see which ones I want to keep. The trick as I understand it from past experience is keeping up with careful selections year after year, but you know that.

One day I’ll be growing some red HH!

[Tucson Grower]

Okay, this morning I trimmed off 61, rather large, seedpods that were being hosted by 'Heavy Hitter' plants, in rows 3 and 4.

[heavyhitterokra]

Tucson,

Thanks, for sharing that. It is so hard for me to fathom that your environment is such that the pods have already developed to seed-saving maturity. Over this direction, we had cold weather so late in the Spring that our okra only started blooming in late July. It will be September or October before I can harvest any seeds here.