Playing hooky

 

Shotgun scored first.

A nineteen inch long bowfin, locally called "dogfish"

A spot of weather blew in. We made a dash for the shelter.

Then I scored. The wind had blown the bobber-and-bait toward shore and something had started playing with the bait.

It was a  medium sized snapper. He was hooked on his left, front foot. I surmise that he was holding the cut-bait down while taking bites out of it. He flipped me the bird and the hook dislodged.

Microsatellite markers

It is becoming more common to find microsatellite (genetic) data of various plant clones used in agriculture.

Microsatellites are useful for sorting out parentage, among other things.

If I understand them, historically, plant breeders were either very optimistic about knowing the mother and father of a given creation or they were deliberately misleading.

For example, Kuhlmann was a successful breeder of French-American hybrid grapes. He documented that he used Millardet 101-14 as the female parent. Some experts speculated that he actually used an Oberlin hybrid as the female parent based on the fact that his father-in-law (named Oberlin) was also a breeder of grapes. SSR suggests both theories were wrong.

Pollen parents are more often wrong than the seed parent. Heck, you ought to know what vine or tree you picked the fruit from. Still, bookkeeping errors can occur and plant breeding in the 1880s-to-1920 was an intensely competitive endeavor.

But even that "story" is suspect for the first generation of French-American hybrids. Those typically occurred when the grafted top of a V. vinifera died and the rootstock sprouted up. Since the American species used for rootstock were not hermaphrodites, if it bore fruit it was almost 100% certain that it was pollinated by the grapes in that vineyard.

Perhaps the vineyard had multiple varieties (Pinot Noir, Gamay, etc.) but that is a pain because then you have to perform multiple pickings.

I am still feeling my way around using these SSR markers so forgive the crappy graphics.

The table shown above suggests that Riparia gloire is a much better (but not perfect) match as a parent for the Kuhlmann hybrid than either of the two generally accepted possible female parents.

It seems likely to me that Kuhlmann, at least for this hybrid, used a Vitis riparia clone as the pistil parent. And it may be a simple case of the rootstock(s) in his vineyard being misidentified. He may have thought all of his vines were grafted on Millardet 101-14 when in fact some/all were grafted on whatever random riparia the propagator had available.

Note to any readers who are smart about SSR markers...PLEASE let me know if I am in the weeds on how to use this data.