Has anyone considered transforming landrace crops into tetraploid landraces?
I haven’t done much research on it yet but it sounds like there is supposed to be increased vigor from tetraploid over diploid plants. Also should retain more genetic diversity.
Tetraploid tomatoes? Tetraploid watermelons?
I’m very interested in this topic.
One scenario I’m working towards is trying to cross diploid rose mallow H. moscheutos with tetrapoloid roselle H. sabdifarra (or in the future maybe cranberry hibiscus H. acetosella)
When I was reading the posts related to tetraploid watermelons recently, it occured to me that another pathway might be inducing some tetrapoloid rose mallows to allow crosses in both directions with the two Hibiscus tetraploids I mentioned.
This is all theoretical to me so far, but I’m trying to gain some hands-on experience.
Ploidy can be an issue in ground cherry breeding as well, with some of the more successful commercial cultivars being polyploid while wild species and populations are generally diploid.
It’s all theoretical to me to. I get there’s a lot of moving parts and it might not be as simple as it sounds. The idea came to me when I was reading about brassica species and the author indicated that tetraploid brassica rapa species were much more likely to establish themselves off the farm than the diploids. That perked my ears up.
A use case that immediately stands out is harnessing the genetic diversity of diploid potatoes and creating tetraploids out of them. That was mentioned in a scientific paper I just read.
The scientific researchers writing papers about this subject makes me think I might be on to something.
Here’s a discussion about tetraploid tomatoes.