Mangling Black Sea Man
 

This afternoon I attempted for the first time to emasculate a flower. The victim was Black Sea Man. I re-read Patrina's thread on how she executes her crosses, and I visited avrdc.org to look at their instructions which included pictures. Quite frankly I didn't know for sure what the 'anther cone' was, although I was correct in my assumption.

Things didn't turn out quite as well as in the pictures on that website. It showed the anther cone being sliced then lifted off in one piece. I made a slice but it didn't lift off, then a second slice, before finally just pushing sections of the anther cone back and clipping it off. I also clipped off the petals, but am now worried that I may have damaged the ovaries or possibly even cut them off too! No idea!

After the first flower didn't seem to go well I decided to do a second one. It turned out only slightly better. The stigma or whatever it's called is fine. I'm just hoping I didn't do too much damage.

Do you guys & gals slice the anther cone in a circular fashion so you can lift it up in one piece? From the pics I thought the guy made a slice or two on the side of the cone and it seemed to lift right up.

Hopefully in a couple of days the flowers from the donor plant will ready to contribute pollen. A couple are not far off from opening.

Interesting experience but I'm a long way off from doing this correctly.

Jeff

Like you I when I first started doing crosses(last fall), I tryed to follow the examples online. After many trial and errors, I found that for me it is easier to just carefully grab the anther cone with tweezers(curved or hooked tip) and start to pull. I don't normally get it all with one pull and just rip out different portions of it. After you do this on several hundred flowers it gets pretty easy and efficient. The main thing you don't want to do is break or scratch the stigma or ovaries. Even if you do everything correct the flower will more often than not drop off(at least for me), so I just do as many as possible. Another thing I do now is wait till the flower is open but still with a green tint to it, at this point the anthers are more developed and easier to yank out and also ready to accept pollen. From the online info it would seem that this stage is already to late to emasculate since the flower probably already self fertilized. What I can say is that with the varieties I am growing that the flower is usually yellow and wide open before it releases its pollen. How can I tell this? Well I can't get ANY pollen out of the flowers with an electric tooth brush until it is pure yellow and wide open. Even if the flowers partially selfed I will be able to distinguish the crossed and uncrossed seed since I am playing with a lot of recesive traits(sprout seeds from a PL X RL cross and you should get only RL in the F1 if the cross took). This system seems to be workin for me. JMHO. I am sure others with more experience than myself will chime in here.

Appreciate the advice, Vince. Sometimes it's the folks who are recently new to something that know what advice to give, since they've recently gone through the same thing.

I butchered the flowers up so much that I have a feeling I also cut off some of the 'needed' parts. I'm not expecting success. Will see.....

I'm curious what you want to cross it with?

Johno,

Good question. My intentions are to use pollen from my "Wishful" F3 plants to see if I can get anything interesting from the cross. I also have Black Cherry starting to bud along with another Black Sea Man so that's a possibility as well. Considering how much I mangled the flowers yesterday I'm not really expecting a cross to take.

I've tried several recommended emasculating methods with success, but this summer I found using my thumbnails was faster and more efficient than tweezers. It takes a few attempts to get it down, but it works better because you can "feel" the right pressure and the right penetration, and you don't pluck off so many blossoms or break as many pistles. It also goes much quicker after you get the knack.

Basically, cradle the green blossoms in the "diamond" made between your two index fingers and your two thumbs, and then gently pry the blossom open with your two thumbnails. Then continue gently removing the anther cone with your thumbnail of choice being careful not to scar the ovary or break the pistle.

Thanks for the technique Travis. I'll keep it in mind for the next cross.

Jeff

I like scissors with thin blades and sharp points, and
thin-tipped tweezers. The scissors serve to cut off the
petals and sepals (leaves around the flower), then I use
the point to gently wiggle a slit in between a couple of
anthers about halfway up. Then I switch to the tweezers,
get hold of the anther cone via the slit, and pull. Usually
it comes off in pieces, but with care I can get hold of the
pieces of anther cone without cutting the ovaries or bruising
the tip of the pistil (or breaking it off completely).

The hardest ones for me are the flowers with tiny, very thin
pistils (easy to break off if you inadvertently twitch at the
wrong moment while grabbing or pulling the anthers).

The anthers are not attached very strongly, so if you can get
hold of them without damaging the pistil or ovaries, they will
just pull off without pulling anything vital off with them.

If one had a light enough, precise touch, one could do it all with
a very sharp exacto blade, but I found it a little too easy to slice
into the ovaries at the base of the pistil that way.

dice,

I used an exacto blade to slice the cone. Pretty sure I did damage with it, due to operator error of course. Also used a small clipper/scissors looking thing to help pull off the cone. My first attempt was clumsy. Will keep trying!

The more you do this, the more patient you become about
getting ahold of the anthers without disturbing anything
inside them. It helps to have an appropriate sized pocket
somewhere that can hold either tool where it won't fall out
as you stroll around the garden.

Update: I ended up not performing the cross. I tried getting pollen from the donor flowers, but wasn't able to get enough pollen to really give it a go. (Small flowers)

I'm debating whether to try again. I have other flowers on the B.S.M. & Wishfuls that I could attempt a cross on. Unless I change my mind later today, I wont try this again. I'd hate to waste more potential B.S.M. tomatoes when getting pollen from Wishful has proved so difficult. And no I don't have an electric toothbrush. :)

[quote]And no I don't have an electric toothbrush.[/quote]

That makes all of the difference. The pollen falls out on
whatever collector you have (piece of plastic wrap works;
easy to see on there), but the flower stays on the plant,
and buzzing it helps it self-pollenate.

It does not have to be an electric toothbrush, that is just a
handy shape that will not damage the plant. (I buzzed flowers
to collect pollen with a Dremel one time. The electric cord was
an inconvenience, though.)

reply
 

I was thinkng about getting one of those 7.99 battery opperated tooth brushes for next year. I figure if it is good enough for me then it is good enoughh for the tomatoes.
Kat

I probably will end up getting an electric toothbrush eventually. I still brush my teeth the old-fashioned way. Just put some baking soda on my finger, and brush away. :( Just kidding! Considering how clumsy I am, maybe the toothbrush will be the way to go.

I'll look at my flowers again today and decide whether to give this another try. I hate sacrificing flowers, but don't want to try crossing w/o emasculating the flower first. Most of the blossoms now are too far gone to try it.

Those battery-operated "travel kit" electric toothbrushes
work well. That is what I used this year.