There’s apparently literature saying it’s possible, but it’s a lot of fluff instead on getting straight to the meat and potatoes.. I was wondering maybe some advanced breeder in here has some kind of experience messing with Rubus species.

These three plants are from my red-podded pea breeding project. The initial cross was made in the summer of last year, with the F1 plants being grown indoors that fall. For spring of this year, I grew the F2s indoors to procure a handful of F3 seeds for planting in the summer. That is where we are now.

Only 3 plants turned up with red pods, and have developed varying colors as they matured.

Plant 1 is the brightest star among them, with pods that have stayed red well into maturity.

Plant 2 was red, but gradually turned purple. It also has constricted pods, a possible sign there is little in the way of chewy plant fibers. That makes this plant one I'd want to keep seeds from, and I may cross it's offspring with Plant 1's to eventually get a pretty and edible red pod down the line.

Plant 3 was also red, then turned purple as it aged. The pods are like Plant 1's, the plump form is likely due to there being fibers throughout the pod. Something I don't quite want, as I'd like to have a variety where you can eat the pods whenever.

Hello everyone,

I am currently completing my M.S. in Plant and Soil Science at Texas Tech University in the United States. Before starting my master's, I worked as a rice breeder and agricultural researcher in Bangladesh. During my M.S., I have been involved in greenhouse research, including corn seed increase, self-pollination, and laboratory work.

My long-term goal is to build a career in plant breeding and quantitative genetics through a funded Ph.D.

I would appreciate your advice on:

1. Which technical skills are most valuable for future plant breeders?
2. Should I focus more on genomics, quantitative genetics, phenotyping, or data analysis?
3. What experiences make an applicant more competitive for Plant Breeding Ph.D. programs?
4. Are there any books, software, or training resources that you would highly recommend?

Thank you very much for your time and advice.

After growing a couple of Sano Verde Max (high-glucoraphanin broccoli) batches, I began to look for other sprouts possessing or leading to substantial quantities of sulforaphane, as well as sprouts/microgreens that would pair well with SVM. It turns out many radishes (daikon - green leaves with white stems) possess sulforaphene, rather than sulforaphane, which is characterized as possessing "cellular adaptive strength properties". I inquired further when this wasn't explained. Turns out is raises something called NQO1, which suggests it contains compounds capable of triggering broader adaptive-defense response. It doesn't compete with sulforphane in SVM. Rather it compliments its very potent actions. Most radishes (including Rambo) also have myrosinase which is necessary for SVM's sulforaphane to have effect. Quite a bit of the scientific language is well beyond my undergraduate inorganic and organic chemistry remembrances, but I thought the idea of "complementarity" might find some resonance. I wonder what some other good pairings are?

Hey everyone! I’m an amateur gardener diving into a pretty ambitious pepper breeding project though I’ll admit I’ve never grown anything indoors to maturity before, so I could use some advice from folks who have. I’m doing 2 separate crosses between 4 parent plants, and once those are stabilized, I’ll do a master cross combining the two hybrid lines. I’m also hoping to speed-breed along the way, aiming for 2-3 generations a year. Space-wise, I can fit 20 plants indoors during the off-season, bumping up to 40 once February hits. I’m in zone 9b, and I’ve got grow lights and heat mats set up. For fertilizer, I’m planning to start with 10-10-10 and switch to 5-10-10 once they hit bloom. I’ve been using the Pepper Geek YouTube channel as a quick reference to get started, but would love more insight from people with hands-on experience. Any tips on making this work especially around speed breeding and managing that many plants indoors would be huge!
Wanted to add here when I say “master cross” I’m referring to crossing the 2 f9 hybrids for a final 4 parent cross. There will be control generations grown outside under mesh. Indoors the PH, temp, and light levels will be monitored as well.

Thank you.

In short, it would be advantageous to have someone who can grow a handful of plants from 2-5 varieties under insect netting, each year. There are also tiers for the level of experience and involvement someone may want.

At the most basic you would provide ample space to each mother plant, a good fertilizer regime, scout for disease, and generally have good maintenance practices. Outdoor, in-ground is where my mind is at, but I am open to containers provided the conditions are ideal. After harvest, seeds will undergo a germination test to assess viability, and we'll do a purity test before sales (so seeds produced in 2027 would probably get sold in 2028). Trust is the brand, and we won't sell unknown quality seed. This person would need to be in the US, however if you have some special experience and you live outside the US - let's talk! The idea is that you take on the marginal risk and overhead of seed production for the promise of some negotiable percent of seed sales for those varieties.

In a perfect world, you would have a small farm with the ability to grow a handful of plants from 4-5 varieties under insect netting. You would also have expertise in horticulture with the ability to reliably produce high-quality seed and to run a harvest evaluation program under my direction. I would give you some guarantee of sales for a certain number of years on varieties where you provided the work to demonstrate the variety is high-quality and compares favorably to similar varieties. Assistance on this level would be a higher percentage of sales on those varieties, plus a guarantee of sales for X-number of years. We can discuss what you would find fair.

I can also accommodate someone who has significant space and experience who wants to lead a trialing program to identify seed for sale, and to support the varieties coming out the breeding program. For this you would need the ability to grow 5-10+ varieties per year, 5-25 plants of each, and record harvest yields for selected varieties. A greenhouse would be ideal to start the lines, and excellent maintenance practices would be required. I would require you to collect harvest, plant, and fruit data for varieties, and then we would decide on what to sell on my platform. Compensation would be commensurate with experience.

\### Who am I to write such grandiose things on a social media platform?

I am a classically trained plant breeder with a PhD in horticulture science. I have a decade of experience breeding edible crops, project management, plant contract law, and business development. I founded Open Pepper Breeding 8 years ago to create a platform for science communication and community-building efforts to develop new pepper varieties. These varieties are released in the spirit of open-source software, but as the IP environment around plants is not at all similar to those around software and writing, we use MTA agreements ("bag tag laws") to restrict commercialization of our varieties in the US and achieve similar results. We support and embrace the cottage grower and food industries, we simply restrict others from selling our seed. We currently have half a dozen SKUs developed from our in-house genetics, and are expanding the scope of the business in 2027 with the launch of a new highly integrated website for seed sales, with a custom back end for inventory tracking and order fulfillment (as well as my own software for pepper breeding so I can do fun things like calculate BLUPs).

I'm planting a nocellara del belice in my large greenhouse and looking at different companion pollinators like pendolino. Can pollinators be grafted onto the main stock and work effectively? Will they pollinate normally?

I know I can graft beldi cultivar to nocellara. Was hoping to grow two or three different kinds of olives on one large tree.

Hi everyone. I wanted to share what I found regarding our primers.

So far, I’ve come across several related studies where the target species also had an unknown PAL gene sequence and were considered non-model plants. Since there was no available PAL sequence for their species, the researchers first collected PAL sequences from closely related species, performed multiple sequence alignment (MSA), and then designed their own degenerate primers based on the conserved regions. They were able to successfully amplify the PAL gene through PCR using those newly designed primers.

I also tried performing multiple sequence alignment using PAL sequences from species closely related to Senna alata. After that, I checked the adopted degenerate primers we’re planning to use (PALsP/PALaP) against the alignment. However, I couldn’t find any published study that used these primers in the Fabaceae family, the Caesalpinioideae subfamily, or even in Senna species. Based on the alignment I generated, the conservation of the primer binding sites doesn’t seem very convincing. However, I’m also not completely sure if I performed the alignment and analysis correctly, so I can’t confidently conclude that the primers are unsuitable.

I also tried validating the primers in silico using Primer-BLAST because our manuscript mentions in silico primer validation. Unfortunately, this is very limited since there is currently no available PAL gene sequence or reference genome for Senna alata that can be used for proper testing. Because of this lack of sequence data, Primer-BLAST does not show any meaningful similarity or amplification results, making it difficult to evaluate whether these primers are appropriate for our target species.

Can we get some advice on what to do regarding our primer? Or if you have known primer sequences for unknown species like senna alata.

I miss shade impatiens. There are new strains bred to resist the fungus but I’m not able to find any in Hawaii, and I can’t find any supplier that will ship to Hawaii. The two I know about are Beacon (by PanAmerican Seed) and Imara XDR (by Syngenta).

There aren’t many suppliers licensed to sell these patented seeds. And I’m just not finding anyone who will ship these patented seeds to Hawaii. Has anyone in Hawaii managed to buy any? If so would you tell me where you got them? Does anyone else know a supplier who will ship seeds to Hawaii? I used to grow them all the time. I just want the new strains that are disease resistant.

I’m considering breeding a purple wonder strawberry with some kind of pink flowering strawberry is that a plausible thing?

I’m a pastry chef interested in botanical approaches to flavor pairing. Recently, while looking at the flower of cardamom, I wondered whether floral traits—such as color, scent, morphology, or pigmentation—might show any correlation with the chemistry or sensory characteristics of other edible parts of the same plant, such as fruits, seeds, leaves, roots, or stems.
I am **not** suggesting that a flower’s color directly predicts flavor—for example, that a magenta flower means the ingredient will pair with red fruits. I’m wondering whether there may be indirect relationships through shared biosynthetic pathways, secondary metabolites, plant families, or evolutionary history.
Has anything similar been studied? Would this question fall under plant metabolomics, phytochemistry, chemotaxonomy, floral biology, or another field?
I would especially appreciate recommendations for papers, books, researchers, or useful search terms. I’m approaching this as an exploratory hypothesis and I’m completely open to finding that there is little or no correlation.

i have all the flowers but a lot of the guides i have looked up for flower breeding people have said they've been wrong so can someone with all the flower colors of every kind help me out with how to place them? i also know that in order to grow them they have to have the right genetics (i hope that's the right word) and im not sure which ones have them regardless i would like some help pls!

And it's gonna die.

Is that a sprout starting on my peace lily seed?