D
Drorchid
Guest
11 years ago, when I was working at the University of Minnesota, I was working on somatic fusion of protoplasts of Tomato and Potato's (we called the plants "Pomato's").
When I started working here at Orchids Limited I came up with the idea of doing the same with orchids. I decided to choose two species of orchids that were totally unrelated: Phrag. longifolium and Porroglossum loja, a pleurothalid related to Masdevalia's. I was able to develop a method of protoplast isolation from diploid lines, and fuse the protoplasts using PEG induced fusion. Next I used in vitro culture to regenerate the hybrid plants. Molecular, cytogenetic and fenotype traits were analyzed of the hybrid plants and verified them to be tetraploid somatic hybrids. In next month's AOS magazine I will be writing an article about this breakthrough technology in orchid breeding. After 5 years, coming out of the lab the first plant finally bloomed. Most of the characteristics of the flowers are from the longifolium plant. It did however get some characteristics from its pleurothalid parent. We named the new genus: Phragmoglossum. As I have shown that this works, imagine the possibilities: Cattleya's crossed with Paph's, Phrag's crossed with Phalaenopsis etc etc..You guys here at Slipper Talk will be the first to see the amazing results:
The two parent species that I used:
Phrag. longifolium:
Porroglossum loja:
The first flowers of the somatic hybrid to bloom:
Robert
When I started working here at Orchids Limited I came up with the idea of doing the same with orchids. I decided to choose two species of orchids that were totally unrelated: Phrag. longifolium and Porroglossum loja, a pleurothalid related to Masdevalia's. I was able to develop a method of protoplast isolation from diploid lines, and fuse the protoplasts using PEG induced fusion. Next I used in vitro culture to regenerate the hybrid plants. Molecular, cytogenetic and fenotype traits were analyzed of the hybrid plants and verified them to be tetraploid somatic hybrids. In next month's AOS magazine I will be writing an article about this breakthrough technology in orchid breeding. After 5 years, coming out of the lab the first plant finally bloomed. Most of the characteristics of the flowers are from the longifolium plant. It did however get some characteristics from its pleurothalid parent. We named the new genus: Phragmoglossum. As I have shown that this works, imagine the possibilities: Cattleya's crossed with Paph's, Phrag's crossed with Phalaenopsis etc etc..You guys here at Slipper Talk will be the first to see the amazing results:
The two parent species that I used:
Phrag. longifolium:
Porroglossum loja:
The first flowers of the somatic hybrid to bloom:
Robert
