Hello Folks,
I've been wondering about heritable traits. Loic's post
on Zing Me passing
along open standards to its offspring has me
considering which traits are
highly heritable and which ones are not. How
heritable is the trait of open
standards? I'm not really considering bloom
color here, but other traits.
For me plant strength has proven to be
almost non-existent as highly
heritable. Two strong growers producing a
majority of weak plants and two
poor growers producing a high percentage
of strong plants. Substance has
proved to be strongly heritable and often
improved over either parent
(including correcting a weak midrib in the
standards). Stalk height may be
heritable, but my growing conditions
impact that so strongly it would be
impossible for me to determine how
heritable it might be. Snaky stalks are
affected by conditions, so earlier
bloomers are considerably more apt to
have them than those later in the
season but there also seems to be some
inheritance for it showing up. I've
not been able to determine how much
(variable conditions again). So far I
haven't been able to determine if
resistance or susceptability to leaf
spot is particularly heritable.
Conditions have been too variable to make
any conclusions even though
clearly some parents fall into one category or
the other. Ability to give
reasonable increase is another area. It sort of
goes along with strong
growers, but there are some plants that are slow
increasers and still strong
growers. I have some seedlings growing now
where one parent had extreme
open standards (like the one in the photo)
and the other parents' standards
weren't closed, but not as extreme. If
the trait is highly heritable, then
they should be open if they live to
bloom.
I know this is a discussion that is more suited to iris-talk.
I'm not a
member, but keep up with posts via the archives so I'll see any
responses
posted to that forum.
Donald Eaves
donald@eastland.net
Texas Zone
7b, USA
