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Last year was the first year that I was actually seeing yellow-fleshed turnips with red anthocyanins in the flesh. I really like the combination!

[F1 hybrids between rutabagas/swedes (Brassica napus) and turnips (B. rapa)]

These are F₁ hybrids between rutabagas/swedes (Brassica napus) and turnips (B. rapa). I used yellow-fleshed rutabagas ('Brora' and 'Invitation') as the maternal parents and high-anthocyanin turnips from my breeding population as the pollen donors. The resulting hybrids have either yellow or white flesh and oftentimes some anthocyanin inside – something I haven't seen in pure rutabagas. The flavour is sweet and pleasant and more similar to rutabagas than turnips, but with a less dense texture than rutabagas.







Brassica napus as a species originated from a spontaneous hybridization between B. rapa and B. oleracea. Crosses between B. rapa and B. napus are said to be quite easily achievable, particularly when the amphidiploid B. napus is used as the mother.
 
Tim Peters reportedly combined the two species in his wonderful leafy green populations 'Bear Necessities' and 'Gulag Stars', Vermont's beloved 'Gilfeather Turnip' is said to have both rutabaga and turnip genetics, and in 1917, Kajanus [1] published an extremely detailed report on his experiments hybridizing rutabagas and turnips and growing out the offspring. Rutabaga 'Invitation' itself has a turnip in its pedigree [2].
 
I was still surprised last spring by how successful the bud pollinations with turnip pollen on the rutabagas were – success rates like rapa × rapa crosses. The seeds then germinated well, the plants grew vigorously and fast, leaves looking more like rutabaga than turnip.
 
One thing apparently common to the roots of rutabaga-turnip hybrids is the formation of gall-like structures. Even proliferations carrying adventitious shoot buds have been reported [1, 3]. I did observe some gall-like structures, but not as extreme as the ones pictured in [1]. It's probably advisable to use a turnip cultivar that produces hypocotyl tubers with a thin taproot rather than one where the root makes up a large part of the crop when doing such hybridizations. Kajanus [1] speculated that the galls may be the result of an increased susceptibility to Agrobacterium. That wouldn't be great, of course, and definitely something you'd have to work against.



Sources:

[1] Kajanus, B. (1917). Über Bastardisierungen zwischen Brassica Napus L. und Brassica Rapa L. Zeitschrift Für Pflanzenzüchtung, 4(3), 265–322. https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/4225403

[2] Bradshaw, J. E., Gemmell, D. J., & Wilson, R. N. (1997). Transfer of resistance to clubroot (Plasmodiophora brassicae) to swedes (Brassica napus L. var. napobrassica Peterm) from B. rapa. Annals of Applied Biology, 130(2), 337–348. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-7348.1997.tb06837.x

[3] Beijerinck, M. W. (1886). Beobachtungen und Betrachtungen über Wurzelknospen und Nebenwurzeln. Johannes Müller.

Cool idea!

The UPOV example variety for very thick flesh is 'Solario' F1. I haven't grown it yet, but it looks interesting.

Maybe it would also be worthwhile to have a look at what the giant vegetable growing community has got. These record heavy peppers are not terribly large.

Only historically interesting is 'Teufelsauge' introduced by Edmund Mauthner (Budapest) in the early 20th Century. It was claimed back then to be the most thickfleshed pepper ever bred and the illustration from their seed catalogue of 1913 is quite impressive. I'm not sure it's too accurate though. There are also illustrations of perfectly smooth celeriac in there.

[Papers]

Great idea!

I'm not sure if orange will work in an op cultivar, though.

I may be wrong, but I think all true orange cauliflower cultivars carry the Or mutation that was found in a field of 'Extra Early Snowball' in Canada in 1971 (published by Crisp et al. 1975). This trait apparently cannot be stabilized since the mutation will cause stunted growth with very small curds when homozygous. (Pictures of OrOr, Oror und oror can be found in the papers by Li et al. 2001 and Lu et al. 2006).

HM.Clause has been working on new Romanesco colours for their "Amoresco" brand. I think two orange Romanesco hybrid cultivars are on the market by now.



Papers

• Crisp, P., Walkey, D.G.A., Bellman, E., and Roberts, E. (1975): A mutation affecting curd colour in cauliflower (Brassica oleracea L. var. Botrytis DC). Euphytica, 24, 173–176. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00147182
• Li, L., Paolillo, D.J., Parthasarathy, M.V., DiMuzio, E.M., and Garvin, D.F. (2001): A novel gene mutation that confers abnormal patterns of β-carotene accumulation in cauliflower (Brassica oleracea var. botrytis). The Plant Journal, 26, 59-67. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1365-313x.2001.01008.x
• Lu, S., Van Eck, J., Zhou, X., Lopez, A.B., O'Halloran, D.M., et al. (2006): The Cauliflower Or Gene Encodes a DnaJ Cysteine-Rich Domain-Containing Protein That Mediates High Levels of β-Carotene Accumulation. The Plant Cell, 18(12), 3594–3605. https://doi.org/10.1105/tpc.106.046417

Love your new turnip colours. Good luck crossing in yellows.

You are undoubtedly familiar with the Gilfeather Turnip, an already existing cross between turnip and swede. 

Thank you!

I've read about the Gilfeather Turnip but I couldn't find much about it's actual genetic make-up other than it reportedly having both B. napus and B. rapa in its pedigree. The more recent breeding work of Tim Peters and others with B. napus and B. rapa for leafy brassicas ('Gulag Stars' etc.) is encouraging, too!

[The morphological and colour diversity of turnips is similar to that of radishes, but I feel like less breeding work is being done for colourful turnips.I'm currently working on a turnip population originating from black-skinned, red-fleshed, and yellow-fleshed germplasm. My goal is to get new colour combinations in good tasting fall/winter turnips. I'd especially like to combine red anthocyanin colouration of the flesh with yellow flesh colour, the latter being a trait to my knowledge not present in radish.]

The morphological and colour diversity of turnips is similar to that of radishes, but I feel like less breeding work is being done for colourful turnips.

I'm currently working on a turnip population originating from black-skinned, red-fleshed, and yellow-fleshed germplasm. My goal is to get new colour combinations in good tasting fall/winter turnips. I'd especially like to combine red anthocyanin colouration of the flesh with yellow flesh colour, the latter being a trait to my knowledge not present in radish.

I started by crossing black op cultivar 'Negro Azucarado' with red hybrid cultivar 'Collie'.
'Negro Azucarado' has a thick and "pithy" black outer layer very similar to that of black winter radishes, and a sweet, dry, and pleasant-tasting white flesh. 'Collie' has a red skin and some red colour in the flesh.

The first filial generation got me purple turnips with a nice metallic shine, a bit of black outside, and/or a bit of purple inside. Taste and texture were nice and I preferred them to that of 'Collie'.
The last picture shows the hybrid with its parental cultivars. The black individual is typical for 'Negro Azucarado', the more greyish ones I consider off-types.




I then did kind of a "backcross" with a 'Collie' F₂ plant that had nice pink flesh. The resulting "BC₁" generation (let's call it that way) gave turnips with apparently rather high anthocyanin levels and still really good eating quality. This could be the starting point for further selection towards a uniform, high-quality, intensely purple turnip – something not currently on the market at least in Europe.


Multiple genes seem to be involved in the black outer layer of 'Negro Azucarado'. In my segregating progeny population(s), differences in thickness and pattern of this layer can be observed. A thin, transparent black layer on an intensely purple tuber/root can give the impression of an even darker, almost black shade of purple without giving a feeling as rough or pithy as the thick black layer of 'Negro Azucarado'. Such a thicker layer can be quite cool looking too, but it's not what I'm currently after, even though it may have some protective function. The following six pictures show BC₁ plants.



Last spring I did some crosses with 'Goldana' (yellow skin and yellow flesh) to finally get some yellow genetics into the mix. The yellow colour is more or less recessive, so it won't be (at least) until next autumn that I'll be able to see if my desired combination of red and yellow flesh will come true. However, last year's generation ('Goldana' × (('Negro Azucarado' × 'Collie') × 'Collie')) produced some nice turnips already.

This year I also want to try some crosses between turnips (Brassica rapa) and swedes/rutabagas (Brassica napus). Literature suggests that this should be relatively (!) easy – another potential "advantage" of turnips over radishes.

This sounds like a really cool project! The strong waxy bloom that many moschatas develop on their fruits may add a nice touch, too. In fact, moschata cultivars with dark green immature fruits look quite bluish to me once the wax is there and the green hasn't gone yet (e. g. 'Black Futsu', 'Kogigu' etc.).

Does anyone know what makes 'Blue Kuri' and similar maximas look this bluish grey? I think wax and air play a role there, too.

I think it's more common to use maxima as the female parent and it might increase your success rate a bit, but in my experience both directions work rather well with many different cultivars. I think it boils down to the question of which species you want the cytoplasmic DNA in your project to be (which should be inherited solely by the mother). Or which plants look healthier and more likely to give a good amount of well-developed seeds ...

In Europe, FiBL (Research Institute of Organic Agriculture) publishes a positive list of "cell fusion free" vegetable varieties of brassicas, chicories, and root parsley that is binding for producers of certain organic farming associations.
"Cell fusion free" doesn't necessarily mean "CMS free", but in these crops it generally does, I think.

https://www.fibl.org/en/shop-en/1179-cf-free-varieties 

In the first message of this thread i wrote

What about crossing these dark green tomato with blue (anthocyanin) tomatoes ? The accumulation of chlorophyll could lead to very dark blue tomatoes.

There's a cool paper by Sestari et al. (2014) showing very high anthocyanin levels in Aft/atv/hp-2 fruits.
The light-hyperresponsiveness conferred by hp-2 might boost light-dependent anthocyanin production.

Sestari, I., Zsögön, A., Rehder, G. G., Teixeira, L. de L., Hassimotto, N. M. A., Purgatto, E., ... Peres, L. E. P. (2014). Near-isogenic lines enhancing ascorbic acid, anthocyanin and carotenoid content in tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L. cv Micro-Tom) as a tool to produce nutrient-rich fruits. Scientia Horticulturae, 175, 111–120. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scienta.2014.06.010   

are some of them dark green, i.e. darker than usual, and then go red on ripening?

That's what they usually do – if they retain the green, it's because of an additional green-flesh mutation being present.
Interestingly, the ripe red fruit is not necessarily as dark red as the unripe fruit was dark green, if that makes sense. hp-2^dg fruits have an increased plastid size and number per cell, but the decrease in plastid number during chloroplast-chromoplast transition is relatively higher in them than in normal fruits (Kolotilin, 2007). The ripe fruits still end up being a more intense red than fruits of normal plants, just not as intense as you might have expected ...

Kolotilin, I., Koltai, H., Tadmor, Y., Bar-Or, C., Reuveni, M., Meir, A., ... Levin, I. (2007). Transcriptional Profiling of high pigment-2dg Tomato Mutant Links Early Fruit Plastid Biogenesis with Its Overproduction of Phytonutrients. Plant Physiology, 145(2), 389–401.
https://doi.org/10.1104/pp.107.102962

For those who don't know these sites yet:

The American Bugwood Network image sites have many helpful pictures of diseases/pests among other things.

Likewise, the European EPPO Global Database provides pictures and in addition information about distribution, host plants etc.

Yes, they are "orthodox" seeds that can be dried (!) and frozen for long-term storage.
(see also the information in the Seed Information Database).

Hi Olaf,
    Does this breeder have a website? I'd be interested in reading about their varieties.

Tim DH

Just in case Olaf doesn't see your comment:
I'm quite sure he was talking about Saatzucht Gleisdorf.
Check both their German and their English version of the website, because they list different cultivars.
https://www.saatzuchtgleisdorf.at/

Cool project!

Years ago, I grew 'Arenborner Walze' bred by the late Ludwig Watschong in Germany. It has hulless seeds, a bush growth habit and elongated fruits. The fruits are more marrow-shaped though and not like really long-fruited zucchini or cocozelle. The old Austrian 'Tschermak-Kürbis' is similar. I'm sure your new cultivar would be a novelty.

I quite liked 'Arenborner Walze', but I guess by the time lignified seed coats would have become an issue, I wouldn't have wanted to eat the whole fruit anymore, anyway. Do you find that over-developed 'Costata Romanesco' fruits are good to eat as a whole apart from the seeds? Are you planning to add some other genetics to the mix?

Pictures of 'Arenborner Walze'
Left: Immature fruits of different developmental stages
Right: Physiologically mature fruits with fully developed, "hulless" seeds

Yes, the outer parts are fully brown (or maybe a dark olive green). Definitely some reddish carotinoids there. And the centre seems to lack chlorophyll.

Most of my high-pigment plants are weak growers and producers, but one single plant is looking really good. It's the beefsteak type in my next-to-last post.