Back Breeding or Cross Breeding

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jaicobb
Posts: 5
Joined: Tue Apr 16, 2013 4:48 pm

Back Breeding or Cross Breeding

Post by jaicobb »

I read about the effort to save the american chestnut using back breeding to establish a disease resistant tree that almost perfectly mirrored the original american chestnut.

does anyone know if something like this can be done with different species that are in the same Family? for example, i've heard (maybe true, maybe not) that you can graft a Winter Banana apple onto a Bradford Pear. Also, i know apples often have different sets of chromosomes, diploid, triploid, tetraploid, etc. In some cases apples may not be a true diploid or triploid, but have some random number of chromosomes-like 30 or 38.

does anyone think it would be possible that if you spent enough time breeding members of the same Family, (or sub family, or tribe or whatever would work) that you could eventually get some to cross?

i'm thinking of this moving forward, but they are usually grouped into these orders based on some assumption of a common ancestor right? why not then, could it be re-established? Could a tree send out a giant rose flower in the spring and produce a giant fruiting body without thorns that would be productive for centuries? what would the original apple/pear/rose/quince have looked like?

also, i know some random trees will produce chimera fruit which resembles one or more of that tree's ancestors in perfect form. could something like this be manipulated to 'go back in time?'

i'm no geneticist, but i would be curious if any of you have heard of any sort of explanation or experimentation that has been done on this. could be for apples or dogs or whatever creature.

thank you for providing a place to ask questions in and among apple enthusiasts. I wish you all the best.

http://jacoblindaman.com/apples/
appledude
Posts: 429
Joined: Sun Jan 06, 2008 12:24 pm

Re: Back Breeding or Cross Breeding

Post by appledude »

Exactly! I have always advocated bringing back all the speciation to nearly replicate the the original kind!

I doubt there is much academic interest or spare university $$ to get the job done. Someday we might be able to dictate what DNA segments go into the synthetic DNA we are compiling, based on total DNA studies of all known Rosaceae, and their superior properties. After all, who needs mediocre, crap DNA? LOL

Imagine an apple with the heavy smell of hybrid tea roses and interior pigment of blackberries!
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