positive mutations

14 years ago

It is my understanding that every single seed in a plant as a small chance to mutate. Most of these seeds mutate in a way that is not beneficial but a few end up with beneficial mutations.

Now I grow and sell organic heirloom plants. My question is if an heirloom plant exhibits something that is very different ( such as better fruit production, higher vigor, more disease resistance ect..) does that make the plant an "evolved" version of it's heirloom breed and therefore a species that could possibly be renamed as the growers own variety?

I ask this because I have a cucumber plant that is far superior to any of the others I have and without a doubt it has shown signs of having a genetic mutation. In 2 months this plant grew 5 times larger than all the other plants of its same variety.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Comments (6)

iam3killerbs
14 years ago
Such genetic sports have frequently been the foundation of new varieties.

As far as I know, if you breed it and develop it and its noticeably different from the original stock you can do as you like in naming and distributing it.
fusion_power
14 years ago
Each and every new plant contains on average 2 mutations from the original dna. The odds of those mutations being deleterious or having no effect are very high, probably on the order of 1 in 10,000 has some benefit while 9,999 are useless. The far greater likelihood is that you have a chance bee made cross. Plants from such crosses are often significantly more vigorous than the pure stock. That does not mean you don't have something worth propagating. It just means that you should grow the seed for 2 or 3 years to be sure this years performance is repeatable.

DarJones
mistercross
14 years ago
And besides single gene mutations, there is the possibility of chromosome doubling. In that case, instead of the normal two copies of each gene a plant will have four copies of each gene.

For example, the original wild strawberry had 2n=14 chromosomes (7 pairs), while the modern strawberry has 2n=56.

Crosses between plants with different numbers of chromosomes will likely be sterile. If chromosome doubling happens to be the case with your plant then you will have to self pollinate it, instead of crossing with the other cucumbers.
soulreaver
Original Author
14 years ago
Thanks for your help guys. I have been self polinating this plant to keep all of it genetically pure. So I guess I will just have to see how the seeds perform. I hope it keeps producing well and I can rename it :-)
jessicavanderhoff
14 years ago
Soulreaver, if you ever need some volunteers to help you test out your superseeds, I'm sure you'll find plenty :-)
iam3killerbs
14 years ago
Yes, I'm certain that there would be no lack of volunteers. :-D