I nearly didn’t make any record of my successful crosses, but finally decided to write it up. This helps me to see what I need to focus on in further crosses as the season continues. But I find this software (Freeplane) rather frustrating, and very time consuming. It’s not well designed for multiple connection - ironically I am finding mind mapping software very linear! I.e. only branching in one direction, making connecting branches quite awkward. It would be great also if there were a way for the connectors coming from one box to be highlighted when hovering the cursor over the box, for example. And greater ease of moving things around more intuitively.
Does anyone have recommendations for any Mac software that can do similar images as this? I thought about family tree software but did not explore i as, at a glance, it looked like maybe the format is fixed, like date of birth, occupation etc. Perhaps there’s another mind mapping software or some other kind of software that’s good?
Anyway, here are the cross attempts I’m made this year that have so far produced seeds. Starting to grow some of them out now…
I hadn’t thought of using a pictorial representation. Could be very useful. When writing the crosses have you followed convention i.e., female x male?
What is dwarf hirsutum? Is that a tomato? The old binomial for Solanum habrochaites was Lycopersicon hirsutum. Just wondering.
If one kept going, it’s basically a family tree. If there were an app that included the highlighting I mentioned, it could be especially useful, at least for those who like to keep records. I would have thought some such app might already be in use in the plant breeding community…
Yes.
Here:
Unfortunately he mis-spelled it on that page, making searches for it rather hard! Indeed it is crossed with habrochaites, LA1777.
In the early years of my tomato breeding project, I asked the plant breeder we hired to keep track of failed crosses. I would have valued that data more than about successful crosses. Alas, I just couldn’t convince him of the value of promiscuous pollination and self-incompatibility.
I like using the DOT graph description language. It can document any number of relationships.
Yes I had thought about doing that but felt that much to record is just overwhelming for me. Even making the chart above was so daunting, and that’s just the first round of crosses! Perhaps your recommendation will make things easier. As for unsuccessful crosses, I’m kind of keeping it in my mind. For example I had so many failed crosses with chmielewskii (easier crossing it with pimps but really hard with domestics and domestic-wild crosses) and even more with a peruvianum I’m using, but I’m just keeping a mental note that I need to try lots of them to get any success, which I was anyway already doing. I also labelled some flowers that are inside which I vibrated but didn’t cross, checking for SI/SC, which I should record when I’m sure of the results. And I started making cross attempts with some of your SI elites and intend to try to finally get answers as to what they can receive pollen from, though rather than needing to take notes on that, I’ll just make a bunch of crosses on any plants that turn out to be able to receive other pollen so that will be straightforward. But yeah when I get to grow out enough elites or if I get far enough with my SI breeding attempts, keeping records on which can’t receive other pollen will be essential since I would want to build up populations of those.
Yes it looks quite complicated. I found some tutorials on youtube but I don’t yet understand what interface to use, and I have crossing, watering, tidying, and digging to do today. Not sure when I can get to it, perhaps a rainy day some time soon… it looks like it may take a fair amount of time to learn. But it also looks like a nice way to keep linear lists of the crosses, making it easy to check and add to lists of which makes and which females have been used; as well as displaying it graphically as an output.
I haven’t grown out many of my crosses yet. But here’s the first flower from my crosses. The mother was a Wilding, the seed first wetted either jan 26th or Jan 29th, so that’s about 6 months 1 week from seed to crossed pollen. The mother was Solanum arcanum, can’t remember when I germinated that but some time after. It has a great root system and a nice smell.
Over the last week I’ve been teaching myself this dot language. Here’s the data I’ve put in so far, more crosses I’ve harvested seeds for that I still have to put in, but I am fairly pleased with how it’s going so far.
Would anyone like resources for learning how to do this? Also if you click the image I provided in my last comment and then click it again, it will get bigger and clearer.
Ok, well, I’m not on an iPad, but I’m using an app called Visual Studio Code. Unfortunately it’s from Microsoft, but, it is free! And, seems no iPad version but googling shows there are ways to use it on an iPad. Graphviz seems a more usual app to use, but this app I use actually shows the image in real time as I’m coding it, which is really really useful, for tracking errors in my code as I make them, and seeing the changes as I make them of course.
Might not be useful for you, paper works great too But sharing in case useful for others. Installing Graphviz was actually a bit of a mission in itself, but there are instructions on their site.
But sharing in case useful for others. Installing Graphviz was actually a bit of a mission in itself, but there are instructions on their site.