Re: Tetraploids & Flow Cytometry

Jim:

>You and others have made strong claims that it is obvious that more 
>work in Flow Cytometry is needed to determine the ploidy 
>characteristics of hostas because characteristics are obviously 
>better.( than diploid characteristics,for example?)

>It is not obvious to me.

I have to agree with you that tetraploid hostas may not be of that 
great value as compared to other plants.  Supposedly, Ben has done 
some flow cytometery and found many triploids and tetraploid hostas, 
but hasn't presented any of this information to members of this robin. 
Well, if there are tet hostas already in our gardens, I can't find 
them by looking at them.  Supposedly, ventricosa is a natural 
tetraploid, but when I look at ventricosa I can't see anything about 
it that says "tetraploid."  I have some OP seedlings from ventricosa 
that are clearly hybrids and I can't see anything about them that says 
tetraploid.

Whether or not hostas will benefit from being converted to a tet level 
can only be shown by actually converting some hostas to the tet level 
and seeing what they look like.  From a breeding point there probably 
is limited value in converting hostas to tets because hostas are 
already amphidiploids with lots of duplicate genes.  Some hostas might 
look nice at the tet level, but there doesn't appear to be any great 
need to shift hostas to the tet level like the way daylily hybridizers 
shifted daylily hybridizing to the tet level.  

As has already be mentioned by others, there is a lot of hosta 
germplasm that hasn't been used in hybridizing.  Bringing this 
germplasm into the breeding pool will probably be far more beneficial 
to hostas then to work to convert existing hostas to the tet level.  
However, not withstanding everything I said above, I still wouldn't 
mind seeing someone work with converting hoatas to the tet level just 
to see what they look like.  

Joe Halinar

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