Team Echinacea established quantitative genetics experiments to determine the additive genetic variance of fitness in Echinacea, with the idea that we can estimate evolutionary potential of study populations. Quantitative genetics experiments 2 and 3 (qGen2 and qGen3) represent the third generation of Echinacea in our common garden experiments. The grandparents of qGen2 and qGen3 are the 1996 and 1997 gardens. Plants from these experiments were crossed to generate qGen1 (a.k.a. Big Batch), and plants in qGen1 were crossed to produce seed for qGen2 and qGen3, which now inhabit exPt8.
We visit exPt8 every year to assess fitness of Echinacea in the plot. Originally, 12,813 seeds were sown in the common garden. Seeds from the same maternal and paternal plant were sown in meter-long segments between nails. A total of 3253 seedlings were originally found, but only 669 plants were found alive in 2019.
In an exciting turn of events, we found a flowering plant in qGen2 this year! This was the first flowering plant found in exPt8. Fortunately for our one flowering plant, it had four flowering friends to cross with from the Transplant Plot. We took phenology data on the qGen2 head, measured it, and harvested it.
The presence of a flowering plant influenced Riley Thoen to make a new measuring form for exPt8 in 2020. In the past, the exPt8 measuring form was very different from other measuring forms. Through 2019, we measured all leaves of basal plants in exPt8; we only measure the longest basal leaf in other plots. Riley designed the 2020 exPt8 measuring form to mirror the measuring forms from other common gardens. In the future, the exPt8 measure form will have a head subform and team members will only have to measure the longest basal leaf of each plant found.
Start Year: 1996 and 1997 (Grand-dams), 2003 (qGen1 – dams), 2013 and 2015 (qGen2 and qGen3, respectively)
Location: exPt8
Overlaps with: qGen1, 1996 and 1997 gardens, heritability of flowering time, common garden experiment, flowering phenology in experimental plots
Data/material collected: phenology data on the flowering plant and transplant plot plants (available in the exPt1 phenology data frames in the cgData repo), measure data (cgData repo), and harvested heads (data available in hh.2019 in the echinaceaLab package; heads in ACE protocol at CBG).
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