line bred Phrag. Memoria Dick Clements

[Drorchid]

A few years ago I decided to line breed some of our Phrag. Mem. Dick Clements (I don't think anyone had tried doing that), so I sibbed two first generation Dick Clements that both looked similar to this flower:

In the next generation it is amazing what an improvement I got, the flowers almost have the same shape as a Jason Fischer, but still have the same color as a M.D. Clements. I have used one of these to remake Jason Fischer, so hopefully the shape of the Jason Fischer will improve as well!

line bred Phrag. M.D. Clements 'Superior':

Robert

 

[Darin]

Wow Huge improvement there. Are you seeing consistent improvements in the entire 2nd generation group or just in select individual plants?

 

[Drorchid]

Wow Huge improvement there. Are you seeing consistent improvements in the entire 2nd generation group or just in select individual plants?

I unfortunately did not get too many seedlings out of this cross, but all the ones that I have seen looked pretty similar to the one shown above. But the one shown was probably the best out of the batch.

Robert

 

[slippertalker]

This sure points out the value of sib crossing the better clones of specific grexes to create even better forms. I've been trying to sib cross my Jason Fischers to do the same thing, but so far it hasn't been successful.

 

[Drorchid]

This sure points out the value of sib crossing the better clones of specific grexes to create even better forms. I've been trying to sib cross my Jason Fischers to do the same thing, but so far it hasn't been successful.

I have found Jason Fischer to be a reluctant breeder, so if you use it twice (both as a pod and as a pollen parent) your chances are slim to none that you get any off-spring. I have also tried to make many sib-crosses between Jason Fischers, and only once did I get seedlings to grow, in that time I crossed a diploid Jason Fischer to a tetraploid Jason Fischer. I think if you want to line breed in that direction, you will be better of line breeding both Mem. Dick Clements and besseae, and than remaking Jason Fischer with both the line bred Dick Clements and the line bred besseae. Also try Backcrossing Jason Fischer to Mem. Dick Clements (you will get Phrag. Robert C. Silich), I have found that will take more often than crossing Jason Fischer x Jason Fischer.

Robert

 

[Shiva]

Lovely and well done.

 

[NYEric]

Yay besseae hybrids! I can't wait to make a trip out to OL!

 

[Phrag-Plus]

I can understand the temptation to do some sibling, but I don’t believe it is a good way to improve crosses. I believe the better way to improve crosses is to find and use better parentage than sibling crosses. From my own work on breeding Phragmipedium, results, analyse and knowledge, I will never use a sib cross in breeding except to found clues or something to proves.

A primary cross should give 50% of both parents, when you sib them the chance of getting 50-50 is not very good maybe 50%. As you agreed by the difference of chromosomes count the variability could be greater but I can’t evaluate this by now.
But by sibling a MDC, there is some probabilities than 25% of the seedling phenotype will go on the side of besseae and 25% on the sargentianum side.

That’s mean the first one should look more like a Phrag. Jason Fischer the second More like a Phrag. Jerry Dean Fischer. In the next generation we will have a lots of everybody will try to understand how come by breeding a MDC we are getting all those range of results. And we will see more worrying about mislabelled plants, NID or guess what it is Phragmipedium…

It is my point of view!

 

[slippertalker]

How would you consider the selfing of such a cross?

 

[Drorchid]

I usually don't like to self a plant, but prefer to outcross or sib plants. In general when you self, you get inbreeding depression, and the flowers will be smaller, and the plant less vigorous than the parent.

There are a view exceptions when I will self-pollinate. If the plant already is a self pollinator (like fischeri) over time due to natural selection you have ended up with the strongest plants, so the plant is probably homozygous for all the "stronger" genes, if you self that plant you wont end up with inbreeding depression.

When you have an exceptional plant, for instance an FCC awarded plant, even if you self it, you will end up with higher quality flowers compared to crossing it to a lesser quality flower.

If it is the only plant in existence (for instance when the yellow besseae was discovered there was only one plants, so to propagate it, it had to be selfed).

Robert

 

[Phrag-Plus]

I usually don't like to self a plant, but prefer to outcross or sib plants. In general when you self, you get inbreeding depression, and the flowers will be smaller, and the plant less vigorous than the parent.

There are a view exceptions when I will self-pollinate. If the plant already is a self pollinator (like fischeri) over time due to natural selection you have ended up with the strongest plants, so the plant is probably homozygous for all the "stronger" genes, if you self that plant you wont end up with inbreeding depression.

When you have an exceptional plant, for instance an FCC awarded plant, even if you self it, you will end up with higher quality flowers compared to crossing it to a lesser quality flower.

If it is the only plant in existence (for instance when the yellow besseae was discovered there was only one plants, so to propagate it, it had to be selfed).

Robert

Hi Robert,
you are not talking about the same thing now! I do agree than selfing or sibling a specie is a good way and sometime the only way to get better and improve flowers. And yes with an FCC species can and should be use in propagation to improve the progeny.

But sibling or selfing a cross like MDC or (F1,F2 etc…) it’s completely an other story. And I don’t believe than selfing or sibling even an FCC cross will lead in better results and this especially with Phragmipediums… But it’s an other discussion!

 

[Phrag-Plus]

How would you consider the selfing of such a cross?

X Mem. Dick Clements

 

[slippertalker]

X Mem. Dick Clements

Or any such cross......Do you consider a value in a selfing of a hybrid cross?

 

[Drorchid]

Hi Robert,
you are not talking about the same thing now! I do agree than selfing or sibling a specie is a good way and sometime the only way to get better and improve flowers. And yes with an FCC species can and should be use in propagation to improve the progeny.

I know it is not the same thing; I was just responding to Slippertalker (Bill).

sibling or selfing a cross like MDC or (F1,F2 etc…) it’s completely an other story. And I don’t believe than selfing or sibling even an FCC cross will lead in better results and this especially with Phragmipediums… But it’s an other discussion!

I disagree, I just showed that by sibbing two MDC's you get an improvement over either parent. If I were to have two FCC plants of the same hybrid and I would sib them, I would also see an improvement; on average most offspring will be similar to the parents; some will be worse, but you will also be able to select some that will be even better than either parent (have larger flowers, or have different flower colors).

Robert

 

[Phrag-Plus]

Or any such cross......Do you consider a value in a selfing of a hybrid cross?

It always depend how we are considering what hybridization is and why we are doing it for. In my opinion, when a cross is registered, we should be able to remake it as it was registered and we should try to improving them buy using superior parents.

By selfing or sibling them, for me it is a kind of a dead end, unpredictable and less valuable for hybridization they will lead to misidentification and misinterpretation of the parentage in the future hybrids.

 

[Kevin]

By selfing or sibling them, ..... they will lead to misidentification and misinterpretation of the parentage in the future hybrids.

This is what I was thinking when I saw the result. If MDC started to look like that now, and you used it for breeding, you would get a lot of mistaken identity when looking at the plants.

 

[Kevin]

Robert: could you explain in layman's terms how you can cross two flowers that are very similar (as you said in this case) and get a result that is not like either parent? I thought line-breeding is when you took two flowers for example, one with darker colour, and one with larger flowers, and got a result of a larger flower with darker colour. How do you get something completely different?

 

[Phrag-Plus]

I disagree, I just showed that by sibbing two MDC's you get an improvement over either parent. If I were to have two FCC plants of the same hybrid and I would sib them, I would also see an improvement; on average most offspring will be similar to the parents; some will be worse, but you will also be able to select some that will be even better than either parent (have larger flowers, or have different flower colors).

Robert

For me, by sibling two MDC’s you show me than the result is going to be something between a Jason Fischer and a Jerry Dean Fischer. And I do agree to that!
But what is going to be the improvement in hybridization?
Why not simply use a FCC MDC with a better or an FCC besseae or sargentianum?

By crossing them back with besseae, sorry I will not call it a Jason Fischer anymore… It’s going to be something between a Scarlet O'Hara and MDC…

 

[Drorchid]

Robert: could you explain in layman's terms how you can cross two flowers that are very similar (as you said in this case) and get a result that is not like either parent? I thought line-breeding is when you took two flowers for example, one with darker colour, and one with larger flowers, and got a result of a larger flower with darker colour. How do you get something completely different?

Lets assume we are working with diploid (2N) parents. When you create an F1 Hybrid between two species (in this case Memoria Dick Clements is a hybrid between Phrag. besseae and Phrag. sargentianum) you get 50% of the genes from one species and 50 % from the other species. In general most of these F1 plants will look very similar to one another. Even if you recreate the same primary cross using other parents they will still resemble each other. Now what I did was crossing two of these F1 plants together. What you get is segregation of genes and recombination, so instead of a 50/50 split of genes from both species, you can get a whole array of segregation; one plant can be 40/60 while another 55/45 etc. In the case of Mem. Dick Clements, some plants will resemble the sargentianum plant while others will resemble the besseae plant. In the picture I showed of Mem. Dick Clements 'Superior' there are probably more besseae genes that accumulated for flower shape resulting in wider and rounder petals.

Line breeding is just a breeding method that you can either do within a species or within a hybrid grex (this is often done in Phalaenopsis breeding). In this case I could be breeding for flowers that are larger and have rounder petals, but still have the branching charcteristic of sargentianum. from my F2 population I would select the 2 parents that fit these goals the best, and cross them together to create my F3 population, Again within the F3 population I would select for plants that have larger and rounder petals and branch a lot. Again I would cross the 2 best plants to create my F4 population. After each population I would see more plants that have larger and rounder flowers with high flower count per branch. As in each generation I am crossing a Mem. Dick Clements with a Mem. Dick Clements they still would be called Phrag. Mem. Dick Clements.

Robert

 

[NYEric]

Or besseae or sargentianum! :evil: