Rajen:
Thanks for the kind words, but it is not an achievement to croak
about :). It is an EXTREMELY easy thing to do, if you know some
fundamentals of Botany and Horticulture.
I have successfully cross-bred the large pale-green Oxomiya 'lao'
( gourd) with Italian Marrow ( a long thin variety of 'lao') years
back, and raise the hybrid in our garden every year. The hybrid is a
long but club ( goda) like variety.
I don't know that the hybrid 'kerela' will be 'kerwn' resistant.
It could be, but it could also be extremely vulnerable. I don't know
enough about genetics to be able to predict what could be expected to
result from the cross pollination. Yes, certain disease resistant
varieties CAN BE produced by selective breeding/pollination. But it
takes years of methodical work, of trial and error. There are laws of
heredity which can predict certain characteristics of a cross bred
plant or animal. My effort could be compared to shooting in the dark
to see if anything will be hit. Good thing though is that it is highly
unlikely to produce a 'kerela from hell'.
Thanks much for sharing your 'bogori aasar'. We too used it
sparingly. But it is all gone now. I envy you Houstonians and
Floridians and Americans from the South and West who have the climate
to be able to grow Assam plants outdoors and can be sure they would
survive the winter. Bogori would be hard to hybridize, because it
really does not belong to the plum family at all. There are different
strains of it in Assam, Bengal, north India etc. I am sure cross
breeding with these variants are eminently possible.
Dil Deka has some Bhat Kerela plants. I am going to get me an
'aalu' ( tuber) from her next time, and see if I can cross breed 'tita
kerela' with 'bhaat kerela'.They are both 'momordicas' and just might
work.
I tried last year to create a cross between a 'jika' and a
'bhwl', But I failed. I will try again this year when they start
blooming in about a couple of weeks.
I am trying some other experiments too. But it is too early to
talk about it. If something useful comes out of it, you will surely
hear from me :-).
c
At 7:31 PM -0500 8/19/05, Barua25 wrote:
Chandan:
That is a great achievement, I would say. Please do publish it in some magazine here and specaially in Assam with some sketches and pictures so that people would know and may practise the same May be your hybrid variety will not suffer from kerwn. The process of creating hybrid fruits seems to be exciting although I am absolutely novice in this field. I definitely would like to have seeds of this new variety of Kerela. Deep fried kerela with white rice and chilli is one of my favorite Assamese dish for Sunday lunch.
I am sure you can do it with other Assamese fruits. As I told you before, I have successfully planted an Assamese Bogori Gos (straight from Jorhat) in our house in Katy, Texas. The good news is that it survived the frost second year in a row. This year the tree produced enough khar-khwa Bogoris for Ajanta to make couple of bottles of Bogori Asar which we are enjoying sparingly like bapoti xahwn. May be you can teach me how to make a hybrid Bogori out of this with some American plum variety.
Thanks
Rajen
----- Original Message -----
From: "Chan Mahanta" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <assam@pikespeak.uccs.edu>
Sent: Friday, August 19, 2005 12:33 PM
Subject: [Assam] For Gardeners
> Raiz:
>
>
> I am a part-time khetiyok ( gardener), among other things :-).
>
> I am pleased to announce that I created a hybrid tita kerela, by
> cross breeding a variety of semi-wild kerela that I collected seeds
> of from a vine from the highlands of Jamaica in 2003 with the long
> Assamese variety. This Jamaican variety kerela ( momordica--bitter
> gourd) fruit is really tiny, about 1" in diameter and about 2" to
> 2.5" long, with dainty ( about 3" diameter) leaves. The fruits are so
> small that they are not useful for eating. The seeds are black,
> about 1/4" long X 1/8" wide. I was told by someone that it is seen in
> Florida also, growing wild.
>
> Just out of curiosity, I pollinated an Assamese kerela female flower
> with a male Jamaican pollen, and vice versa. One did not work, but
> the other did; except I was not careful about recording which hybrid
> fruited, and don't know the exact mix.
>
> Anyway, I grew a new hybrid plant this spring from the harvested
> seeds. At first, the resulting plant did not indicate any conspicuous
> characteristic. But soon I began to notice that it is an amazingly
> prolific plant, growing like crazy. You can almost see it growing
> :-). Soon a very robust and wildly growing vine took over the trellis
> and spread all over nearby ground, tomato plants and and overhead
> trellis that I built for 'laos' ( gourds) producing lots and lots of
> mid-sized ( 1.5" dia X 3" to 4" long), pale green ( more white than
> green) hybrid fruits. In fact we have so many fruits, I stopped
> picking them, and they are ripening and cracking up like blood red
> flowers with yellow petals.
>
> The taste is not extremely bitter, like some of our Assamese little
> kerela varieties. You can say it is of medium bitterness.
>
> My guess is that it MIGHT become a good garden vegetable for amateur
> urban gardeners as well as rural khetiyoks in Assam, because the
> plant is so robust and prolific. It can also become a beautiful
> screening/landscaping plant at verandas as well as against ugly ,
> blank compound walls, because it grows so fast. The flowers are
> mildly fragrant,like all kerela plants. But since there are so many
> flowers, the pleasant aroma could be smelled from a slight distance.
> That makes me think, it could be a fine urban landscape plant in warm
> humid areas.
>
> If anyone wants seeds to try let me know. I will be pleased to share some.
>
> Iti bineet,
>
> sondon kerela-seed mohonto :-)
> ( With apologies to Johnny Appleseed)
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