How to Combine Plant DNA
While it's not possible to combine human DNA in a laboratory sense, it is surprisingly easy to combine the plant variety using old-fashioned methods.In fact, botanists and everyday gardeners have been combining plant DNA for hundreds of years, producing some of the most beautiful fruits and vegetables the world has seen.You can do the same thing right on your own kitchen table; all you need are a couple of plants, a couple of Q-Tip swabs and a large plastic bag.Many different kinds of vegetables and flowers make good candidates for a DNA swap, but for this discussion we'll assume you have purchased two zucchini plants that have reached the flowering stage.
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Instructions
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How to Combine Plant DNA
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Find a male zucchini blossom. Zucchini plants have two different kinds of flowers. The longer, more slender flowers are male, while the slightly more bulbous flowers are female. Use the fingers of one hand to hold open the blossom of a zucchini plant and look down into the flower. If there is a single pistol in the flower covered by a yellowish powder, then you have located a male.
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Dip your Q-Tip into the flower and rub it against the pistol until the tip is covered with a fine yellowish powder.
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Locate a female flower. This can be on the same zucchini plant or another plant, but for this experiment, we will transfer the male pollen from one zucchini plant onto the stigma of a second plant. With the fingers of one hand, carefully open flowers until you find one that has what appear to be tiny zucchini at the base of what are called stigma. Roll the tip of your pollen-covered Q-Tip gently around the stigma, transferring as much pollen onto the stigma as possible.
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Locate another male flower and once again transfer as much pollen onto your Q-Tip as possible. Locate another female flower on the other plant, gently open it up and transfer the pollen to the female stigma.You have now combined the DNA of two different zucchini plants. Two benefits of hand pollinating are that a larger percentage of flowers will develop into full-grown zucchini and your zucchini will generally be larger.
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Tips & Warnings
Rather than using a Q-Tip, many pollinators prefer to use a fine-tip artist's paint brush.
If you are cross-breeding two different strains of zucchini, you may want to cover your hand-pollinated blooms with a large plastic bag for several days to prevent bees or flies or other insects from repollinating your flowers with pollen from unknown types of plants.
