This video might be of interest. Here’s the description:
Breeding Carrots for Production, Resilience, Flavor and Fun in Organic Systems
1,277 views Mar 28, 2022
Join us for a webinar to learn fundamental concepts and strategies that are key to successful carrot breeding work. Presenters are Laurie McKenzie and Micaela Colley of the Organic Seed Alliance, Solveig Hanson of the University of British Columbia and Philipp Simon of the USDA ARS.
Find additional carrot resources at Breeding Carrots for Production, Resilience, Flavor, and Fun in Organic Systems | eOrganic
The presenters cover basic genetics, color expression, trait expression and selection, and demonstrate how to cut, evaluate, and select roots from a diverse array of orange and rainbow colored roots.
Specific topics addressed in the webinar:
Which traits are straightforward to select for and which are not (more complex)
Strategies to tease out environmental effects from genetic expression
Basic color genetics - which colors are dominant and “easy to fix and work with” and which are more challenging
When to stop - traits that are very difficult or “impossible” to select out or away from
A word about male sterility - how it works in carrots (it’s naturally occurring) and what to do if, or when, it shows up
Root evaluation, selection, and storage
Cool video showing how to replant carrots for saving seed
Joseph talks about saving carrots and how he does it, but I found a video that shows the process a little more (it’s short so it doesn’t show everything). It helped me visualize it a little more so I figured i’d share it.
The thing I love about this is even the 1/2 carrot worked. I had a question on how you could taste the carrot to know if it’s good enough to save seeds, and this answered that for me.
Ah yes I have seen that one. It would have been nice if he had:
taken similar carrots and broken one in half (rather than very different sized carrots) so we could get an idea of what comparative effect it would have, and
Kept track of which carrot were which!
I suppose we could guess that his weaker plant may have been from the half carrot though I guess it could have easily been either… But yes definitely it was reassuring that we can taste them and still keep them going to seed. I wonder if anyone has tried this with daikon radish also? (Please say if you have! With any kind of radish for that matter).
No. I was just pointing out that some say one thing while others say another. For me, the interesting thing is that various beings can cross. It may be very useful from a landrace perspective, if you were wanting to broaden the genetic base for example.
