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Fruit & Orchards

Understanding hybrids and f1s

14 years ago

I thought I understood hybrids and f1 hybrids and such until I read something different. Can someone explain these to me? Also, how will the seeds produce? Thanks.

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Comments (7)

brendan_of_bonsai
14 years ago
Since fruit trees are both long lived and self infertile there is very little line breeding, if you take two very similar apples and cross them then you can get very different fruit from the offspring. However you can cross one species with another, like tangerines and Kumquats or Asian and European pears or cherries and plums. With veggies often times simple crossing two varieties constitutes a hybrid.

F1 hybrids are the first generation, they will have exactly 50% of the genetics of each of there parent stocks. A Keifer pear is a hybrid with exactly one set of genes from euro pears and exactly one set from an asian sand pear. If you crossed a keifer with another similar f1 hybrid then you would get an f2 hybrid, and you might have two copies of gene A from the sand pear and two copies of B from the euro pear and one of each of gene C Its a toss up.
semaje
Original Author
14 years ago
Alright I kinda get it. What are the fruits from grocery stores usually? F1 hybrids?
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brandon7 TN_zone7
14 years ago
I don't agree with Brendan's definition of an F2 hybrid.

An F1 hybrid is, as Brendan explained, the first generation of a hybrid cross. So, If A and B are crossed and that cross directly produces C and D, then C and D are F1 hybrids.

An F2 hybrid is the second generation of a hybrid cross. So, if C and D from the above example were crossed, their offspring would be F2 hybrids. The gene mixture would still be from the original A and B source, but the relative influence of A and B would be variable in the F2 generation. So, you might have plants very much like A, others very much like B, and still more somewhere in between.
brandon7 TN_zone7
14 years ago
As for the fruit in the grocery store, you'd have to specify which particular fruit you're talking about. The genetic background of many fruit trees can be pretty complex.
brandon7 TN_zone7
14 years ago
This just popped into my head as a better way to explain F1 and F2 hybrids...

Say you cross a blue flowering plant with a red flowering plant. The resulting offspring (F1 hybrids) could be a bunch of purple flowering plants.

If you then allowed the purple plants to breed, they could produce offspring (F2 hybrids) with some members flowering red, some flowering blue, and some various shades in between. Frequently, the F2 generation characteristics are much more variable.
brendan_of_bonsai
14 years ago
By "similar f1 hybrid" I meant an f1 hybrid from the same parent stock, hence the genes in the f2 generation all coming from the same parent stock.

If the alleles for red and blue are codominant. your example holds true, and you would get 1/4th red 1/4th blue and 1/2 purple offspring on average.
brandon7 TN_zone7
14 years ago
Brendan,

My use of the red and blue flowering plants was to give a simplistic, non-technical example. In real life, as you allude to, things get much more complex. A number of factors may contribute to a characteristic and its expression in a genetic population.

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