(priorly posted in @polarca topic on her remarkable selection work on melons in the most crazy environment… Sorry for the prior hijack 
. 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:
. But yes will think about it. Maybe I’ll keep a “medium to heavy” population.
