Re: Making Crosses
- To: i*@Rt66.com
- Subject: Re: Making Crosses
- From: t*@Lanl.GOV (Tom Tadfor Little)
- Date: Mon, 18 Mar 1996 09:37:56 -0700
Louise asks
:Have iris breeders worked with embryo culture the way lily breeders have?
:Some lilies can "take" crosses which are not "normal" but the seed-to-be, ie
:embryo aborts in nature and breeders have been able to "rescue" these and
:produce spectacular interspecific crosses via "test tube" culture. Is this
:being done in irisdom?
Yes, it has been done, especially by aril hybridizers. However, the
consensus seems to be that it's a whole lot of trouble for the number
of seedlings obtained at the end of the line. Germination is good, but
transplanting is a problem. This may reflect that fact that most iris
breeders are hobbyists working on a very small scale in their kitchens
and backyards. Embryo culture is very demanding in that kind of environment.
When I surveyed aril/arilbred hybridizers for the ASI Yearbook a couple
years ago, I was a little surprised to learn that almost all of them
germinate seeds the old-fashioned way: stick them in the ground and
wait.
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Tom Tadfor Little tlittle@lanl.gov -or- telp@Rt66.com
technical writer/editor Los Alamos National Laboratory
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Telperion Productions http://www.rt66.com/~telp/
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