Network and potentialization of a squash selection (+Loy's studies)

Adaptation Projects Cucurbits
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(priorly posted in @polarca topic on her remarkable selection work on melons in the most crazy environment… Sorry for the prior hijack :wink:. This version is edited with her simple tip: using coffee filters)

I will make a selection/marking in an about 250 maximas pile and about a 150 moschatas one day in january (all of these later transformed into soup by friends), and to do that I will use individual coffee filters with on it markings of my criterias, criterias thought to be able to reasemble grexes on demand, for whoever wants.

Those criteria will be : 1. Earliness (got my markings on fruits already) 2. Shape 3. Weight 4. Skin color 5. Flesh color 6. Dryness/Humidity of the flesh. So these infos will be written (via codes) on each coffee filter: one per squash.
I will add skin thickness as the 7th and probably a “joker” criteria for the outstanding beauties or really singular traits I would love to go back to.

As it’s mostly a second year grex (2022 and then 2024, 2023 being a loss) I intend to start heavy selection on taste next year and further on, but as it seems that carotene correlates not badly with taste I’ll start with that main criteria + dryness of the flesh (as I personnally want long keepings, i.e. not the usual squash that in here is sold in autumn and frequently rots before Christmas… on that subject dee Loy’s publications further down.

This will help creating a diversity of populations, on demand, from two different really diverse grexes made each of about 40 varieties of each species, all pre-selected on storage capacities + the diversity of appearances, as I thought that, in the need of finding crazy offsprings that could handle sowing post cover crops I needed to maximise the inner diversity of the population to see some surprising combinations occur. So in my mind it was to be “meta-populations” in the sense of the second option underlined by Ceccarelli p80 : Evolutionary Plant Breeding : Salvatore Ceccarelli and Stefania Grando : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive . I say “meta-population” just to differentiate from populations which are asembled on one singular trait: i.e. a population of different varieties of butternuts. In practice I call them all modern landraces but that was to specify that in relation with my breeding goals: as I need really really outstanding vigor to grow out of the cover crop I needed maximum diversity to hope for crazy offsprings to come.
Then, as stated before, if I could have accessed a core collection of each species I would have done it.

Eventually, and me connecting first with Going to Seed and now with the PEPs group (francophone), I was thinking about the potentialization of this already heavy work (if you want to know more about it, look here: end of second video evol pop 2/2, translation may not be perfect: https://attendee.voila.live/programs/2mhISO07hgJYq8y9r8Jukyyw93K), and so what’s the biggest obstacle I see for the development of our approach? I feel it’s that we are gardeners, that is ok or great to see us involved in breeding, but out of the vegetable industry present in some regions, many market gardeners would be interested but… Of all I know nearly none will go for asembling a first year grex, with the prior work necessited, then wait 2 years before starting selecting… Then +3 to get something kind of well adapted withbno supplementary selection work. Why? They like the idea, but can’t afford losing time and money because their economic situation is difficult, if not awful. So I’d say 98-99% of them won’t go into even the first year.

So what ? What if, using that super diversified grex, I/we could reassemble populations on demand? On criterias. Then I think that one out of two market gardeners will go for it, as they will start directly in year 3, skipping the researching/assembling, the year 1 and year 2… One could say that there will be more variability (so instability) than what was appearant when I did my markings, because of crosses, which is true, but that saves so much time and energy it becomes really worthy, and the inner diversity being bigger than those phenotypes criterias (markings) the evolutionary potential being bigger.

Then we, gardeners or whatever, will enlarge our networks with market gardeners, who in general grow much much more surfaces than we do. New relationships, friends, projects, adavancements.

That’s why I used the term “potentialization”: the work we do is huge, and the potentials far exceed a one way selection we would do if on our own. So why not sharing it widely and ease the way for those who cultivate much much more surfaces that we do.

Few examples :

  • my main maxima population will be asembled like this: 1. Early to mid early 2. Indifferent 3. Heavy 4.Indifferent 5. Dark orange 6. Dry 7. Thin
  • another could be assembled like this: 1. Early 2. Kabosha to Turban type 3. Light to midweight 4. Indifferent 5. Mid to dark orange 6. Indifferent (for autumn consumption) 7. Thin
  • one assembled on only the “outstanding beauties” criteria
  • my main moschata population will be asembled like this: 1. Early to mid early 2. Long necked 3. Mid to Heavy 4.Indifferent 5. Dark orange 6. Dry 7. Thin
  • another moschata will be asembled around the brown and green flesh traits.
  • etc.
    Let me know if you think of another useful trait.

Brent Loy’s publications:
em9270.pdf (2.3 MB)
Maximizing Yield and Eating Quality in Winter Squash 11 (1) (1).pdf (20.7 KB)
Managing winter sq for fruit quality and storage Loy (1) (1).pdf (223.7 KB)
The video which got me in touch with Brent Loy’s remarkable work:

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Wow big love! You cracked the code!

Only thing i can imagine is some people like to peel their pumpkin. Especially when the skin is hard after cooking, they don’t like to eat that in their soup. And i like weight as a category, but some people ( yes those again) like it when it looks like a small fruit, because a big fruit means a lot of work. And when speaking of that i think people like it better if it’s a soft cutting fruit.

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Yes I think as Joseph did I will select for both thin skin and long conservation. That on my main maxima future modern landrace.
Then about weight yes that’s sound, people tend to prefer smaller ones for different reasons. I may not :laughing:. But yes will think about it. Maybe I’ll keep a “medium to heavy” population.
Then for the main moschata pop I may also go with an “all phenotypes” pop strictly selected on high carotene and dry flesh if others go forward seriously with the long neck type.

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On the long run that’s my representation of taste selection, meaning how I focus more and more on excellence:

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(“Moyen” means average taste, “bon” means good)

I don’t mean it has to be that “complicated” but that’s how I look at going towards this goal while trying to keep or insert genetic diversity.

Then that’s the PDF document Sophie and I created to illustrate my overall process for Antibes’mresentation, as seen in video, a kind of transcription of Joseph’s approach in my particular post cover crop context, i.e. needing supervigor and ability to thrive before mineralization really starts, so enhancing the role of oversowing and thinning, that kind of things, eventually yield selection when the taste will be excellent, probably year 5.
1 A2 X pepscurcurbitacees (1).pdf (850.1 KB)
In French again, but nonetheless most can see the usual structure with the grex/selection/maintenance steps.

Those 2 documents have not much to do with the main topic there (selections criteria) but give a scope or a framework in which they are situated.

The overall idea of this topic being: why making just one landrace after this such heavy work that could go into different bifurcations, i.e. many local modern landraces - may they be localized in different places. That is contemporary to a reflexion with members of the PEPs group about the weakest link for this approach overreach, so ors wider diffusion: this weakest leak sounded like the grex stage (first assembling on criteria then 2-years in the fields without much selection), and how we could overcome this. So that’s kind of the response: why not taking profit from this meta-grex to reassemble it on demand to go directly into the selection step, so 3rd year.

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Related pictures, with parts of the harvest: what I brought to Antibes

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Short summary of Brent Loy’s findings:

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Beau travail Thomas! Some people such as Joseph, William, you are our providers of genetics. Some of us will use your work to build landraces in our gardens/farms and share those adapted seeds with more people (or back to you).

I think most of us here in this forum are either pioneers or early-early adopters (or both). The kind of work done to provide a landrace “starter pack” ensures more early adopters are able to adopt the landrace “innovation”.

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Salut @Patate !
Yes it’s kind of what I feel, even if in detail I feel more like a guy of synthesis who then put at scale what pioneers did: without the Joseph’ and others’ breakthroughs I would not be thinking of “potentializing” the steps they already underlined. In french the usual term for that role is “développeur”, i.e. developer. Iike a John Kempf is for AEA: all he does and proposes to farmers is build upon his own synthesis of what others did in different fields of knowledge. But yes that’s a subtle difference as we are talking of the “in between” step : between real pioneers and early adopters, and it’s still innovation.

Apart from that: I think I will list a few proposals of pre-selected populations for moschatas and maximas, i.e. what I see would be interesting to explore in later years. Could be called “Adopt a grex” :wink:

Then if anybody sees another useful trait that I could mark, let me know. For example yesterday I found that the sugar content could be easily marked just by eating a raw piece, which I did with an astonishingly super sugary brown fleshed moschata from @Tanjaeskildsen, then compared with a few butternut types: differentiation was easy!

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So happy you got a brown fleshed one! How did it look on the outside?

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Like these, that small

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Nice format, for people who eat alone or elderly people for whom it is difficult to handle fruits of several kilos !

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Easy to peel also…

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So cute! Sweet thing in a small package. I do find that the green and brown fleshed are on the smaller size, normally no more than a kilo with one exception so far.
I normally eat the skin as they are so thin. No reason wasting time peeling.

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The Ayote seeds I got from Baker Creek produced little butternuts that look like that, but so far no green or brown flesh. I haven’t gone thru all of them yet though.

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Yes I quote myself :rofl:

Anyone seeing another trait I should mark when doing my drying of seeds individually, per squash?
Out of:

  • earliness,
  • shape,
  • weight,
  • skin color,
  • skin thickness,
  • flesh color,
  • flesh humidity/dryness,
  • and this “joker” thing for outstanding beauties or characters ?

Thanks!

Reminder: this is meant to assemble diverse grexes for diverse persons/purposes on demand and speed the process for those not willing to go through all steps - which I would have done 1000% 3 years ago if someone offered it. That would have saved me so much time, efforts and money!

In other words what trait would YOU cherish out of this set of traits?

Other traits I would like to assess/select in later years but cannot this year:

  • yields: I can’t estimate the yields per plant this year as all vines were jumbled up, as I planted super densely (2/m2) to get the maximum crossing rate
  • extra long keeping quality: that I will not be able to estimate as most of what I got (about 400 maximas and moschatas) will be opened the same day in January. Nevertheless none of them will have really bad keeping quality, as for most varieties staying intact or so until january is quite a challenge. Most of these were harvested around the 20th of september by the way.

Side note : for those especially looking for this later trait: extra long keeping property: I’ll have dried seeds of Tetsukabuto randomly crossed either with moschatas or with maximas patch, around end of march. Tetsukabuto being an interspecific hybrid, and probably one of the very best keeping reference in the squash world, and excellent tasting, but not good in autumn though, as it’s very starchy at harvest, before naturally converting this to sugar throughout winter. Search links shared in the first message of this topic to delve into that.

To summarise: any other trait you would be looking for?

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Traits to possibly look for

  • Flavor not related to carotenes. In our tastings, we’ve sometimes found very orange squash that come out pretty bland and some of the lest orange fleshed ones have interesting other flavors. The rule of thumb probably helps, but I like to keep my mind open.
  • Not sunken ends. I believe @Joseph_Lofthouse found those squash tend to rot more easily (assuming moisture gets stuck there). Pointed ends store better.
  • High or low starch. I see benefits in both things, but some things (like raw eating pepo) I don’t want high starch content. Most people can usually detect starches raw as a grainy raw-potato-kind-of-thing. Some of the squash that get the lowest scores raw when I taste with the students, get high scores when they’re steamed. A weird pepo-type that could be fun to develop would be high-starch winter pepo. I’ve saved seed of one that came out almost as baked potato.

For moschata:

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Earliness is important for me but I live in Canada. For my own project, I will just need fruits that mature before frost and then I can start working on flavor.

This is for Moschata. Maxima might end up having different challenges.

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  • strange flavor : fruity, spicy, bitter or taste similar to another vegetable
  • a moschata or maxima squash with the texture of a pepo spaghetti squash
  • a squash with a potato size that could be eaten whole roast in the oven
  • a pumpkin with an unknown color (fluo yellow with multicolored dots :laughing:)
  • a champion squash that would be selected on a seed leavening at the lowest possible temperature
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Two tools I’ll be using:

Yolk colour fan:

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I have decided to buy this (found a used one for 10€ = 10USD) after reading this thesis :
Eating quality and variability in carotenoid content and profiles.pdf (6.3 MB)

It’s said it’s not perfect to evaluate carotenoid content (you need on top of that to assess the intensity of each colour, i.e. carotenoid content), but globally yes the darker it is the more carotenoid there’s in it, and also and mostly it correlates well with good taste. So I’ll just use it to mark my seed lots before drying kind of fast. Seems handy.

By the way: one thing I learned is that the carotenoid content goes up in storage, as well as sugar content -which I knew from prior readings linked above, the latter being derived from starch progressive depletion/transformation-. This being particularly important for most moschatas, butternu notably, less for most maximas, even less for most pepos.

Then this taste wheel which sounds very useful to precise things without spending hours finding words:

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Taken from this really good document, in which there is data nicely presented around needed storage time and many other things:
em9270.pdf (2.3 MB)

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To me, as long as a winter squash matures well enough to store, the only thing that truly matters is the taste—specifically, sweetness. Since sweetness in squash usually develops in warm weather, any pumpkin that pulls that off earns its spot, no matter what it looks like. It could be military green with pink fuzz, and if it tastes good, it’s a keeper in my book!

Otherwise,

Earliness: useful if you’re racing frost like it’s the Pumpkin Olympics (I do)

Shape: who cares – unless you’re planning to win “Most Aesthetic Gourd 2025” at the county fair

Weight: who’s weighing squash at the dinner table?

Skin Color: unless you’re into visual flair or need it to camouflage in a pumpkin patch, I don’t think it’s that important

Skin Thickness: could matter if you’re storing them long-term… or you have squirrels with power tools

Flesh Color: important if you’re blending it into soup and want it to look Instagram-worthy

Flesh Humidity/Dryness: okay, this one’s sneaky important—watery squash makes soggy pie!

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