Breeding Technique
Looking at it logically, since onions are biennial, in an on-going Potato Onion breeding project there are actually three categories of breeding candidates under cultivation at any one time.
- The seedlings which result from the planting of seeds (year 1)
- The single bulbs resulting from the previous years seedlings (year 2)
- The bulbs that have made it out of last years category 2 culling process (year 3)
The first category is the onions which result from the planting of seeds. These will hopefully produce an onion bulb of reasonable size.
I have never observed an onion started from seed split into multiple bulbs in the first year. They seem to want to put all the energy
they have into producing just one bulb.
The second category is the plants resulting from the single bulbs planted from the previous years seedlings (last years category 1).
By the end of the second year these will hopefully have divided and produced multiple bulbs. The majority do not split and will just set seed since it is now their second year. The bulb is
usually inedible after this point. For most of them, trimming off the scapes and not letting them set seed does not seem to encourage division
into viable Potato Onions. They just devote their energy into producing new scapes.
The third category consists of the very few candidates that have made it out of the previous years category 2 culling. Note that these plants are in
their third year by this time. These are, hopefully, viable Potato Onion candidates and have been observed to divide in the
category 2 season. Of course, in the first year of category 3 there are only very few bulbs of any one new variety
since they came from a single bulb that split into two or three. These bunches (groups) are split apart and replanted so as to increase the numbers and observe
how they fare over time. Of course, the fact that a bulb split the previous year does not necessarily mean the resulting offspring are prepared
to do so again in the following season.
I suppose the bulbs remaining after the category 3 culling could be considered to be a fourth category. However, I must admit I do not keep records
of which category 3 bulb came from which group - I don't much care for that sort of thing. At the end of the season
I just split apart every viable category 3 Potato Onion group and store them together. They will all get planted out randomly the following spring. The idea is
that, ultimately, they will either work or they won't. Having a detailed pedigree is of little use since once I have a Potato Onion that I intend to run with
I can just propagate from that bulb alone - its pretty easy....
.... and thats the final part of the breeding program. One useful thing about seeking to
breed a variety that will ultimately be vegetatively propagated is that truing up the line is trivial. Once you obtain a locally adapted
cultivar which works, then you can just split that variety in order to obtain identical copies. So that is one factor working in the
projects favour - although it does feel a bit like cheating. Of course, long term vegetative propagation
has its own problems - thus the requirement for the resulting cultivar to have the ability to set viable seed as well.