Unless you have been growing the Carosello Tondo Manduria cucumber for multiple years, it would be nearly impossible to describe how meaningful it is for me to get to the point where I did this last season. The Tondo Manduria is generally a polymorphic variety, meaning that the plant and/or the fruit exhibit diverse traits. While the plant is generally compact, some plants in the population will vine. The fruit itself is even more codominant, expressing two phenotypes – one of which is purely light green and round in color and another which is round and light green with dark green splotching. There are also differences in fruit texture and, occasionally, fruit shape. The texture of the fruit can either be tender and smooth or more firm and slightly grainy.
For a number of years, I
have grown the Tondo Manduria – hoping to find a population of only
tender light green fruit with splotching on a compact plant. I am of the
opinion that the splotched tender fruit is one of the most beautiful
fruit and believed that there must be a commercially available seed
source that grew the variety in purity. However, after years of trialing
various seed companies – and even seed from Italian friends, I came to
the conclusion that there is no seed company that sold either phenotype
of the Tondo Manduria in isolation. My choices were to grow an irregular
diverse population or nothing.
My serendipitous opportunity to change that came this last year when I grew the Tondo Manduria in a larger population. The larger a population of a specific variety of plant, the greater the opportunity for the grower to identify unique traits. Additionally, by their nature, the sheer numbers of larger populations provide the grower with clusters of plants that exhibit similar traits. This was the case with the Tondo Manduria I grew in the fertile garden and in the olive orchard. I took advantage of the clusters of plants to be able to select for the consistency of coloring I had been trying to get for years.
My selection process for
isolating any trait in a cucurbit is based on a plant’s proximity to plants with similar
characteristics. This is because the plants are pollinated by bees,
which generally go from one flower to another, preferring to save energy
by pollinating all the flowers in a specific area at a time. I have
used this counting technique multiple times to select for specific
traits in my cucumber and melon populations. The basic premise is that
the higher number of plants with the desired trait that surround a plant
with the same desired trait, the higher the chance that the center
plant will produce seeds that will grow into plants with the desired
trait. If a plant is surrounded by two plants with the desired trait,
then I use a marker to write a “2” on the fruit of the central plant.
Likewise, if a plant with a desired trait is surrounded by five plants
with the desired trait, I will write a “5” on the fruit of the plant
with the desired trait. Once again, the higher the number, the greater
the probability that the seed of the succeeding generations will exhibit
the desired trait.
As I was going through
the fruit at the olive orchard, I found a fruit that was surrounded by
six plants with the desired trait – light tender fruit with dark
splotching on generally compact plants. I wrote a “6” on all of the
fruit of the plant and, when the fruit had fully ripened, I harvested
and dried the seed separately, and labeled the bag with the selected seed with the number “6”. Recognizing that there was enough time left in the season
to grow out the next generation of the desired Tondo Manduria, I
sprouted the seeds and planted them in one of my backyard grape macro
bins.
To my delight, the plants that grew from these seedlings developed healthy compact vines that produced tender round light fruit with dark splotching. Despite a high variability in the plants of the succeeding generation, all of the plants in the new growout produced fruit that exhibited the desired traits. While, at the beginning of the season, I was resigned to the outcome of not finding what I was looking for, the sought-for traits were realized as I opened my eyes and mind to the possibilities. The seed I planted did not produce all the fruit I was looking for, but rather I was given the opportunity to make the most of the situation by seeing the path ahead. Sometimes we don’t get what we had hoped for, but if we fail to persevere in that which is most important, then we will never realize that we are only removed from our goal by a few steps.
