The Pears of Illinois: Breeding a Bigger, Colder Opuntia

[CurtisMarauder]

A crackpot experiment of mine. After discovering the existence of cold-hardy prickly pears and being disappointed by their lack of size and plethora of glochids, I vowed to subvert nature by breeding some bigger ones. I don't know which Opuntia species can and can't hybridize, so I'm essentially throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks.

The Master Plan:
Behold my beautiful diagram.

Two or more pairs of desert and cold-hardy cacti are bred together. The offspring are tested for size and cold-hardiness, and whatever survives the winter is inbred to get more consistent traits. Once that's done, the lines are crossed with each other to regain vigor.

For breeding stock, so far I have two species of eastern prickly pear (O. humifusa and mesacantha) and some kind of O. ficus-indica. I'm working on finding more species to use as stock, so if anyone has any suggestions, I'm all ears.

Possible pitfalls:

1. Species may not hybridize due to irreconcilable genetics.
2. Hybrids may be "mules" and unable to reproduce due to irreconcilable genetics.
3. Cold hardiness may be inherently linked with smaller size, rather than some adaptation of the eastern opuntia.
4. Most opuntias are self-fertile, and I don't know a surefire method of crossing flowers without getting pollen everywhere.

If I can at least get past Pitfall 1, I'd still be happy because I have my very own cool hybrid opuntiae, but I'd rather be able to complete the whole plan. If it is viable, this will be a very long-term project, I'm sure.

I know I'm in the deep end here, but am I at least going in the right direction? I'd welcome all the input y'all can give, because I don't know what I'm doing or if this plan will work at all.

[ossy96]

Wow, im very much into Opuntias so im interested in your project, if you want big you should find Opuntia robusta, but i think it is not cold hardy... But Opuntia engelmannii var. Linguiformis has very big pads (elongated) and also cold hardy

[CurtisMarauder]

Wow, im very much into Opuntias so im interested in your project, if you want big you should find Opuntia robusta, but i think it is not cold hardy... But Opuntia engelmannii var. Linguiformis has very big pads (elongated) and also cold hardy

Glad you're interested! Those linguiforms look pretty cool. According to the most basic research I've done, it looks like engelmannii have triploid chromosomes compared to the majority of diploid opuntiae, so they might not be compatible. I'll definitely have to get my hands on a robusta, though.

[greenknight]

You're not the only one working on this - do you know about this group? https://www.experimentalfarmnetwork.org/project/16

They seem to think O. stricta is most promising.

[CurtisMarauder]

You're not the only one working on this - do you know about this group? https://www.experimentalfarmnetwork.org/project/16

They seem to think O. stricta is most promising.

Yeah, I signed up for the project, but they never called me back. Stricta is on my list though.