There are several radish varieties with "cherry" in their name. Probably the most common is Cherry Belle, an early spring radish grown as an annual.

Dave

So if seed saving is easy, how many plants for seed saving? Thank you for the help.

Well honestly radishes isn't something most save seeds from simply because they would rather eat them then baby them to let them go to seed and because radish seeds are so cheap (500 seeds for $1.25).

But if you want to try it, "how many" is difficult to answer since so many things can affect them. For example, 5-8 radish plants grown under ideal conditions (nutrients, consistent water, good weather, no pests, no disease) could give you a thousand seeds. But only if they survive for the months its takes them to bolt and develop seeds. So to improve the odds of actually getting seeds from some of them you'd plant as many as you have room for. ;)

Dave

I am more trying to prevent inbreeding. I know they are outbreeders.

Do you mean you are trying to prevent cross-pollination? If so, that is seldom an issue unless one plants numerous varieties really close to each other.

Dave

I am trying to prevent inbreeding depression in the radishes.

You would be collecting seed after only one generation so inbreeding depression isn't really something you'd need to worry about.

Are we to presume that these are to be grown indoors as implied by your other posts?

Yes, it would be indoors. It would be multiple generations. It would be growing in Coco. I have been looking for a small outbreeder for a while. Thank you for the help.

Inbreeding can be an issue with clones (or with mammals) over multiple generations. It is not really applicable to seeds even over multiple generations. They are not clones. Assuming no cross-pollination, people have grown out 50+ generations of common vegetable seeds with no genetic changes.

Dave

I mean saving seeds from a small sample. Inbreeding depression is where after inbreeding, negative alleles become more common due due a large amount of closely related individuals crossing. I am going to use the Amish as an example. They have the founder effect. They started from a small population and are closely related. The Amish have huge problems with genetic diseases. That leads to negative traits showing up. Negative recessive alleles show up due to closely related individuals breeding.

Yes as I said above inbreeding in mammals can be a true problem. Your example of the Amish is an example of that. However the same does not normally apply to seeds. Even in small samples.

Sure if for some unusual reason one was to plant only a single plant and it produced only 1-2 seeds and only one of those 2 seeds were then used to plant 1 plant which produced only one seed, etc. one might make a case for some inbreeding 5-6 generations down the line although it would require genetic testing to determine if there was any.

But gardeners don't plant things that way, especially not vegetables. There would be no point to it. Neither would a research scientist. And using your original question of radishes one certainly wouldn't plant 1 radish plant and even if they did, assuming pollination, it would produce 100s of seeds. With no cross-pollination and assuming the original was an open-pollinated variety rather than a hybrid, any random sampling of those 100s of seeds would be identical to the parent genetically.

Sorry but I can't help but think there is a mis-understanding or a mis-application of terms here, terms that just don't apply to vegetable gardening.

Dave

I plan on saving for multiple generations. Inbreeding affects all outbreeding organisms. When one individual founds a population negative recessive alleles will be exposed. For example in corn the minimum viable population size is 20.

A bit late to comment but if you are growing these indoors then I think you will be very surprised at the size of a radish plant in flower. A radish grown to eat is small. It's just a little rosette of leaves. A radish allowed to flower and set seed, not so. The flowering stalks get a few feet tall and is not advisable to do indoors.

http://blog.seedsavers.org/blog/everything-you-need-to-know-about-radishes

As for the inbreeding depression, I agree with Dave that it really isn't an issue. I would be much, much more concerned about selecting to prevent early bolting as well as selecting for good, uniform root size.

I'm not exactly sure why you'd want to save radish seeds anyway. I highly doubt you'll be going through a packet of radish seeds a year if growing indoors. Plus, radish seeds are viable for several years easily. There really isn't a reason other than as an experiment.

Rodney