I have written a few posts about my attempt at creating a strawberry raspberry hybrid using cross pollination. While the resultant plants display several morphological differences to the parent species, and are far more vigorous than the strawberry parent, the plants do look remarkably like a strawberry.
I made every effort to ensure a hybrid was produced (emasculating flowers, bagging flowers, etc), and while this would exclude flying insects such as flies or bees this attempt was produced in the field. As such there is a chance that some tiny ant was able to crawl under my bag and pollinate the flowers with pollen from who knows where.
For this reason I have been trying for quite some time to have these plants tested by a lab to determine if they are hybrids or something else (perhaps they are polyploid, perhaps a mutation). For various reasons I have not yet been able to have these plants tested, which has been rather frustrating.
Recently someone contacted me who knows someone in the CSIRO who may be able to test my plants. I contacted the CSIRO, we had a discussion, and they are willing to test my plants. I have sent the CSIRO sample leaves of several F1 hybrids, one F2 hybrid, and samples of both parent plants for analysis.
If all goes well I will know before Christmas if they are hybrids. Regardless of the outcome I will post the results on this blog. Exciting times!
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Hybrid leaves top, strawberry parent leaf lower left, raspberry parent leaves lower right
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F1 hybrid leaves on right, F2 hybrid leaves on left
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Hybrid leaf - long petiolules not quite opposite
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Hybrid leaf at top, parent strawberry lower
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Hybrid - inconsistent flowers and a lot more flowers per set
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Do you have any updates? I’ve been following this for several months!
ReplyDeleteI am still waiting to hear anything. Last I heard the leaf samples had been received, and were put in to freeze dry.
ReplyDeleteEarly in the new year I will touch base with the CSIRO and see if there is any progress. I am really keen to get results, but don't want to be too pushy and get them off side. The suspense is killing me!
Hello there, Damo. It is the middle of January, have you any updates?
ReplyDeleteHi Novalyn,
DeleteI contacted the CSIRO a week or so ago. They have tested all of the samples, they have received the results, and now they need to analyse the results before they can tell me anything.
I am told they expect to have completed this analysis in a few weeks. This has been dragging on since 2017, and the CSIRO are doing me a huge favour that I greatly appreciate, so a few more weeks isn't too much to ask.
I really hope that they are hybrids, but they may not be, and without results I can not be sure. I am trying not to get my hopes up too much, but fear that ship has sailed.
Once I have any results, no matter what they are, I plan to update the blog. I will try to comment here but will probably write a new blog post.
The CSIRO tested my strawberry raspberry hybrids, I made a blog post of the results. https://living-mudflower.blogspot.com/2021/05/strawberry-raspberry-hybrids-test.html
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