How to save seeds from regular celery? These key points you need to master

[Summary]In recent years, many places have bred some excellent regular celery varieties, which also account for a relatively large proportion in cultivation. Since celery is a cross-pollinated crop, regular improved varieties especially need proper seed saving and degeneration prevention, and a seed-saving field or seed-saving base should be firmly established, with good seed plants selected and retained.

        Strict isolation  Within at least 4000 m around the seed-saving field, no other celery varieties may be planted. Generally, special terrain such as lake islands, remote areas or forest belts is used as a natural isolation screen to establish a seed-saving plot or a small-area propagation base.

        There are two celery seed production methods: the large-plant seed production method and the small-plant seed production method：

        Large-plant seed production method Also called the mature-plant seed production method or old-root seed production method. Before the winter commercial celery harvest, in an autumn-planted celery field, select excellent individual plants that can represent the typical characteristics of the variety as seed plants, and remove off-types and inferior plants. When saving a small amount of seed, the selected excellent individual plants can also be transplanted to the seed-saving field; selection is then carried out again in early spring, that is, eliminating plants that bolt early, are not cold-tolerant, and are susceptible to disease. After flowering, pay attention to watering and fertilizing. Celery has a long flowering period, and the seeds mature unevenly. To ensure seed quality, it is best to harvest in stages and batches. Generally, each mu of seed-saving field can produce 75-100 kg of seed. When the large-plant seed production method is used, selection can be made for the plant's commercial traits and cold tolerance, and to a certain extent variety degeneration can be prevented. Therefore, this method is more suitable for the purification and rejuvenation of local improved celery varieties.

        Small-plant seed production method Sow in the same year and harvest seed, or raise small seedlings before winter, transplant them to the seed-saving field the following spring, then let them bolt, flower and set seed, and then harvest the seed. Although this method has low seed production costs, strict selection cannot be carried out on the seed plants, and using it year after year easily causes variety degeneration, so it is mostly used to propagate production seed when excellent new varieties are first being promoted. The key to the small-plant seed production method is mastering the appropriate sowing time. Generally, direct sowing in the open field is done around late February. If sowing is too late, the seedlings cannot pass through the low-temperature vernalization stage, and the seed plants cannot bolt and flower smoothly; but if sowing is too early, the seedlings pass through the vernalization stage while still very small, bolt and flower, and the vegetative growth period is too short, so less nutrients are accumulated, resulting in low seed yield. When using the small-plant seed production method, because the plants are smaller and the seed plants branch weakly after bolting, the planting density should be denser than in large-plant seed production, usually with a hole spacing of 20 cm × 50 cm, and 2-3 plants per hole. Other cultivation and management techniques and seed harvesting methods are the same as those of the large-plant seed production method.