19 RESEARCH REPORTS
PNL Volume 11
1979
HYBRIDIZATION TECHNIQUE VS. SUCCESS RATE
King, C, and A. F. Williams Williams Laboratories, Williams, Indiana, U.S.A
In the course of producing teaching materials, Williams Laboratories
contracts with several local gardeners to produce hybrid peas. Payment is
on a "per seed" basis, and hybridizers are encouraged to "streamline" their
technique. This past year, hybridizers were asked to keep specific records
to help determine the fairness of our wage policy. These records revealed
the following data, which seem worth sharing with pea geneticists.
Hybridizer l's mature pods/cross average was 0.73 and her peas/mature
pod average was 5.9, compared to averages of ca. 0.35 and 3.0 for hybridizers
3 and 4. Though we use several parent combinations, all the above data were
derived using the variety 'Alderman' [a i U V r) as the female parent and
the variety 'Dwarf Grey Sugar' (A I le v R) as the pollen parent.
Removing all petals may save time per cross, but definitely not time
per hybrid seed produced. Our experience confirms that trauma and exposure
to direct sunlight are detrimental to high success rate.