(Trait : rooting at each node for squashes)
Hi Hugo, this trait just doesn’t exist in seed banks, not at all. And on a side note everything is grown on plastic tarps for 50 years so you have zero chance them identifying that trait now and in following years.
You have to consider seed banks as (boring) databases with “some” data you have to go through : each datapoint costs some money to the seed bank because behind each data point you got someone spending time on it. And they ALL seed banks complain about lack of funding, of employee shortage.
So you’ll have to look for a trait tangential to what you are specifically looking for : for example when I was looking into INRAE databases couple years ago I wanted to find crazy root structures and vigor in cereal for my cover crop, so looking into 30000 accessions. Nothing was named “root structures” or “vigor”, so I had to look tangentially and looked at the criteria : there was a 1 to 5 index of growing habit and 3 different scales of height at flowering, scaled one from1 to 5, one from 1 to 7, and another expressed in centimeters. Also consider that dome data is missing in nearly all accessions. But so I combined both : growth habit n1 (prostrate, so in my mind covering the soil) and height n5, n7 or above 200cm for rye (so the tallest). And so after a couple hours of efforts I ended up with a shortlist of accessions corresponding to those tangential traits.
Scroll down those databases and you’ll see.
Still there was a lot to be done in the field and I could throw to the bin 75% of the accessions after a growing season : not at all corresponding to what I wanted. For example there was some spring rye mixed up with winter rye. Not named as such, and so dying miserably.
But on the other hand, if you know people in those seed banks they may help you directly, looking for those particular traits you are asking for, demanding a special effort from them. But being underfunded means it’s not easy for them in general to agree doing some supplementary work. You’ll have to be friends, somehow. Or they really get your interest and that makes sense to them.
Databases are mostly about fruit traits so good luck finding anything related to vigor or anything related to soil/plant interactions, biology, that would express a potential of adaptation. So yes your overall idea is not realistic considering those databases.
Only hope would be if you had friends working in the seed banks, or that you would be in the know of breeders, or cucurbit collectors and you would say to them something that would trigger their interest in that trait. Overwise it’s a no go.
I’ll do a specific recap on IPK-Gatersleben which is the website with all European seed banks.
For those in a hurry I’ve already done it here: Where to get Wild Tomato Genetics! - #12 by ThomasPicard and in another topic related to kiwano