My thought would be to put them in a greenhouse during later parts of winter, and hope that they flower. Then pollinate them in the greenhouse, but bring them out into the cold weather. I sent my only flowering size Simsii to a guy in Escondido (but I did get interesting things in return). I think I will extend their growing period by keeping them in the shade during the summer. There's around 3 things we should consider:
- what temperature does the pollen go dormant at
- what temperature is necessary for chilling resistant genotype to be favored
- what temperature will the plant's flowers get frost damaged...
I think the first step would be gathering as many simsii forms and clones. If I were to self pollinate the flowers multiple times over multiple generations (trying to get chilling resistant genotype), it would only be a matter of time before I got inbreeding.
In this thread, you can see how much variation there is in one species:
http://www.agaveville.org/view...
