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:
- Very long necks. I would love to order a grex on demand for this project: Zuchetta landrace: Very long-necked unripe moschata (tromboncino-type)