I was cleaning out a mailbox the other day, and came across a message from Karl Haro von Mogel, who is quite well known around these parts. He was advising me that his new pollination video — on Cucurbits — had just been uploaded to YouTube. And I forgot to write about it. Apologies to Karl, but I’ll make it up in a minute.
The video is clearly aimed at the more industrial end of the spectrum. Bringing parent plants into a greenhouse was never an option for me. On the other hand, wandering through the pumpkin patch soon after dawn to gather ripe male flowers that had not quite opened was one of the great treats of saving my own seeds. And Karl deals with more than just controlled pollination. The first 3 1/2 minutes gives a good overview of cucurbit diversity, centres of origin and wild relatives. And near the end he reveals the secrets of the seedless watermelon. All in all, well worth 10 minutes of your life, even if you plan never to pollinate a pumpkin.
In his email Karl mentioned that he had entered the video for a competition at Chlorofilms. It was one of 17 2nd prize winners. So were some of his other films, including this one on pepper breeding.
Maybe if we could rustle up “at least $8000” in prize money we’d get some entries to our own competitions. Or maybe we should just enter the next Chlorofilms competition, if and when it happens.
Hey thanks for the plug!
The video isn’t intended specifically toward the industrial end, although we try to show how it can be scaled up from the simple cross to a large number of crosses. The crosses that you see are actual (!) university research experiments going on.
The Chlorofilms contest had a pretty good turnout, keep an eye out for a fall rerun of the contest, the entries might get better!