Disclaimer: We love zucchinis. We eat them in every conceivable culinary way.
We have maintained several lines for the last dozen years. Among them, there are a few that we got from LISP. Throughout the years, several green striped fruit lines, descending from the “OSP Super Caserta” population, have shown amazing culinary traits as well as outstanding cold germination and also great early productivity.
One year, one of the “Dark Star” plants produced yellow fruits. We have since followed one yellow line that exceled at low irrigation tolerance and late season productivity, henceforth known as “Light Star”.
In the “2020 irresponsibly early zuke grow out”, besides selfing them, I also crossed the earliest “OSP Super Caserta” with the earliest “Light Star”. I didn’t think much of it, just wanted to see how much earlier and colder I could manage to germ and grow zucchini the following year, and that cross was a good candidate to push things further, but then…
…serendipity struck again (I have a new favorite word)
From the 2021 “irresponsibly early zucchini grow out” came a yellow striped producing plant. I selfed it and, long story short, am now on the f3.
Problem:
Most of them have short pedicels that break too easily. This is an important trait that highly impacts the % of commercially viable fruit. Would like to address this before going further in the process.
I currently maintain lines that have an extra long pedicel…
… but they are usually very prickly… somewhat wild creatures that aren’t that compatible with my tender skin and mild character.
Have searched around the scientific literature and there seem to be multiple genes involved in the pedicel’s structure. Can any of you gentle souls, refer me to literature on the subject?
