Most lettuce, bean and pea varieties for home gardeners are open-pollinated, while most cabbages, broccoli, tomato, cucumbers, melons and Brussels sprouts are hybrids. Hybrid summer squashes, cucumbers, melons, corn and carrots dominate the garden seed market. The pollination is often done by hand, which results in expensive seed. In some crops, less expensive methods can be used to make hybrids. The tassels are removed from the female or seed parent, or a self-sterile female is used.
Pollination is done naturally by the wind.
Hybrids may be bred to be more widely adapted to environmental stresses such as heat, cold, disease or drought. They have more uniform characteristics than non-hybrids, making crops more predictable in quality. Sometimes hybrids can be made to produce earlier or higher yields, have higher germination rates or more cold tolerance. They do not produce seeds that will grow into plants exactly like themselves, because in the next generation, the genes have segregated into many new combinations, explained Baggett. What this means to the home gardener is that reliable seed cannot be saved from hybrid plants.