Tropicals & Tender Perennials: Tetriploid conversion AKA mad scientest experiment, 1 by bwilliams

bwilliams wrote:
Well I am not a great scientist to tell the truth. I was a pretty bad student in school, any teacher I had can vouch for that. I think it was from my experimenting and chemistry with females that lead to the science failure in school.
When I was much younger I had a laboratory in the basement and was known for creating some pretty explosive experiments after a few miscalculations my lab was permanently moved to the garage.
Now that I am into growing plants I find myself using chemistry much more than I had expected and some of the things my much smarter friends have been telling me sound truly amazing. That is why I am taking up this experiment. To most people Tetriploids don't mean a whole lot it manly means that a plant has double the chromosomes. Which usually means a mutant or deformity. But for the plant collectors this is usually a good thing the more chromosomes usually the larger the flowers. Now as I understand it most plants have two chromosomes one from the mother and one from the father. Some plants either through breeding or mutations may have three chromosomes hens tetriploid. Now as my friend tells me if the number of chromosomes are a even number the plant can reproduce sexually and create seeds. But if the plant had a odd number of chromosomes the plant is usually sterile and will not produce any seeds. This is were the tetriploid conversion is highly needed. For instance I plan to work on cannas and one canna I know is a tetriploid is Bengal tiger. What I would do is take a small rhizome and soak it in this solution for one night and rinse off the next day. Once it recovers from this chemical treatment and hopefully survives. It will then if all goes well have doubled the chromosomes so taking 3 chromosomes and changing it to 6 I now would have a plant capable of reproducing sexually. It would also work great on seedlings and doubling the chromosomes would mean thicker leaves much larger flowers and in some cases odd coloration's.
This sounds like something some lab would be working on but truthfully I believe almost if not all research and applications have been by in home scientist. Most people would think this is unnatural but it does happen naturally through tons of breeding much like some fruit trees no longer have seeds due to breeding for certain traits. I have seen the most impressive use of this in day lilies were huge flowering forms and odd ruffling and colors are seen in the flowers. It has taken day lilies to a whole new ground breaking level of breeding. I hope to now use this technic on other groups of plants seldom worked with.
I had heard of chemical conversions before years ago and it did peak my interest. The problem was the chemicals being used to create mutations could also create mutations in humans leading to cancer. This really made me stay away from this work but it seems now much safer chemicals are being used with even better results than the more dangerous chemicals. So here I am now with my test tubes and rubber gloves on ready to manipulate tons of my new hybrid seedlings. I will post more on my out comes and if interested more information on the chemicals and process used in doubling the chromosomes. Hopefully by spring I will have some interesting results. Anyone else with their mad scientist labs I would love to hear. THANKS