Hi, first year landracing here, and I was hoping you all could explain something to me.
I’ve seen several people on here who are selecting for earliness say they are saving seed from the very first fruit to ripen. Is there a reason to save from that very first fruit that I don’t understand?
Without knowing better, my tendency would naturally be to mark those plants that produced first and try some of the fruit and see how the plant makes out for a few weeks (Disease? Bugs? Able to keep producing under stress?) before deciding if I am going to save from that plant.
The only thing I can think is that by picking the very first fruit you’re hoping that the pollen donor was also early… But my observation is that flower timing and fruit ripening are not parallel timelines, so I’m not sure how relevant that would be?
I’m not an expert on this - but it’s always seemed to me that it’s more important to select for earliness when a crop needs a longer growing season than you typically have. (That is, selecting for earliness is a way to grow crops you couldn’t normally grow.) If you already have plenty of time for seeds to ripen, then there are better traits to select for.
You select what ever selection pressure you want. Earliness is often favoured and generally tells that the plant is best suited to your conditions. At least so far as to make the first ripe fruits. Still you should also consider the general health of the plant. Also plants that suffer can fruit early, but this shows how the plants grow clearly. It’s more common with transplants that often are close to ready to make fruits and then transplant shock can trigger them to start to make fruits earlier than normally. If you have hybrid swarm population, then it wouldn’t matter as much whether the first fruits are selfed or pollinated with other plants. Stabilation takes several generation and as long there is always some crossing saving some that didn’t have the change to cross is just fine. But it can be good idea to tag plants and save also later fruits from the same plant. Personally I don’t think selection is as straight forward. There is always a lot of luck involved. My mentality, when selecting for earliness, is that it’s more important that you cull the slowest rather than one that is the absolutely fastest. Luck factor is just too great that the best that year might not be the absolute fastest, but if you save say from 10% of what you sowed the changes are that weakest didn’t make it there. So you are more like slowly skimming cream than looking for a pearl. I still do preferentially sow from the top performers, but also save those that made through hard selection and showed some potential. Sometimes that best seems to have something special, but not always, and so it’s important to be cautious of rushing into conclusions. Let best genes to be selected over long time.
I personally save all the seeds that i can. Seeds from plants i particularly like go into the “preferred” set; the rest go into the “ low investment” bag. Preferred seeds get somewhat more careful planting and minimalistic tending. Low investment seeds get mass surface-sowed in various places, and get no tending, only sporadic observation. If i like something from the low investment group, it goes into “preferred” group.
I’m not trying to converge on a predetermined outcome, though. Just interested to see what i get. I don’t necessarily know what i like until i encounter it.
I save the seeds from first fruits in a hope that this will allow to reduce time from sowing to maturity. It is a part of process that starts at sowing (I discard all seeds that do not germinate in a given number of days), then I plant out the largest seedlings at certain date, and finally, I collect seeds from first fruits separately. Then later in the season I select for other traits - size of fruit, taste, productivity, etc.
