Hi Johannian,
Amateur Plant Breeding can be a lot of fun. My hobby is growing and breeding zinnias. I have been doing that for a number of years. I chose zinnias because they are easy to grow and easy to cross pollinate, and they already come in a large number of different varieties, so the number of possible different crosses you could make is literally astronomical. And you can get some really different results by making hybrids between your hybrids. I have a couple of message threads here that you might be interested in. These are links to them.
The thread "It can be fun to breed your own zinnias." in
Annuals forum
The thread "My encounter with a "star-tipped" mutant zinnia" in
Annuals forum
I like to work with zinnias because they grow rapidly and I can get two generations a year in my outdoors garden. That lets me make cross pollinations and plant their seeds immediately to see what my hybrids will look like in a few months. By also growing zinnias indoors under lights, I can get another two generations indoors, for a grand total of four generations a year! In that regard, zinnias are almost like Fruit Flies of the plant kingdom. I have achieved many new flower forms in zinnias, of which these are just a few examples. Click on the pics to see larger versions.
I am also working on improving the zinnia plants themselves. Longer narrower leaves look better, and plants that branch three at each node look better than the regular alternate two branches at each node.
There are not a lot of books on amateur plant breeding. Unfortunately, since this one is now out-of-print, the new copies and even the used copies are selling at seriously inflated prices. I paid less than $30 for my new copy back in 2013, and, no, I am not interested in selling it.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1604693649/
But there are lots of details on how to breed zinnias in my message strings mentioned above. And I will answer questions here as well.
ZM (not associated with any product or vendor mentioned or linked)
