Seeing there is so much expertise here in hybridization,I need a basic refresher course. Using the example I mentioned before - the culebra x Jamaican Yellow culebra x Jamaican Yellow. You start with the two - c and JY, cross them with the culebra being the mother plant, because the culebra is listed second. Right so far?? What is the purpose of crossing back to the father plant? Does it have to be the father plant? What would happen if it went back to the mother plant? Or do you just go back to whoever is the stronger plant?
Lots of questions here--
Multiple crosses
You cross back to the parent with the recessive trait you wish to bring out more or to test cross. Many hybridizers cross back to both parents as well as crossing seedlings together. Perhaps Eclipse will be by to give us some of his pointers and insights.
Culebra x Jamaican x (Jamaican x Culebra)
Culebra x Jamaican x jamaican x Culebra
Culebra x Jamaican x Culebra x Jamaican
Culebra x (jamaican x Culebra x Jamaican)....etc...Perhaps someone will make sense of it all.
This message was edited Friday, Feb 1st 1:51 PM
How do you define 'recessive trait'?
Liz,
A recessive trait...its like having blue eyes or brown.
One can have BrBr and have 2 dominate genes. This means all of your children will have Brown eyes. If you have BrBlue though and your husband has Blue/Blue eyes then some will have brown and some will have blue eyes. Can someone else who can articulate this a bit better please step in here and explain phenotypes and such.
I get the part about br/br but when it comes to brugs are we talking about leaf shape, texture, plant size? Say I wanted to keep culebra leaves but change bloom size or colour? I think what I'm asking is when it comes to brugs how do you know what is the dominant and what is the recessive gene.
I'm starting to sound dumber by the minute.
A dominant gene allele is one that only needs one copy to be expressed. A recessive gene allele will only be expressed if there are two copies, one from each parent. Then there are also those sneakly little genes that have what's called incomplete dominance, but the only way I know to explain that is using coat color in Australian Shepards, LOL!
Phenotype refers to the physical expression of the genes, while genotype refers to the actual alleles present in the cells. Using uppercase letters ro represent dominant alleles and lowercase letters to represent recessive alleles, the phenotype, or characteristic expressed, would be the same for genotye AA or Aa, but would be different for genotype aa.
An allele is simply a variant for a given gene, like the gene for eye color. There's a Brown allele 'B' and a Blue allele 'b', with Brown being dominant. Genotypes BB and Bb will have brown eyes and be phenotype Brown, while genotype bb would be phenotype Blue. This is why two brown-eyed people can have a blue-eyed child, if they are both genotype Bb and each contributes the 'b' allele to the offspring.
To make things even more interesting, a lot of characteristics involve more than one gene, (like how long a tail a given dog has) and some genes have more than two alleles, like blood types.
The really great thing is, you really don't have to know all this stuff to hybridize great brugs!
I think what we want to know here is what brug flower colors are dominant and recessive and what is dominant in fragrance and size, shape, etc. Right????
Culebra was theorized to be the result of a variant virus that infected a single plant years ago in the Sibondoy Valley in Columbia.The only plants were coveted by the local Shamans. The only crossing in the past were with these culebra cuttings collected in the wild.The F1 generation produced normal Aurea type foliage and flowers.These seedlings were then crossed back to the original Culebra plants and produced F2 hybrids that DID carry some of the foliage Chacteristics..but not the flower forms.The research revealed that in Aurea `Culebra' up to 83% of the pollen grains were deformed and thus would not procue seeds.Of the crosses made..only one or two seeds per pod were fertile also.
Deanne.
White is the dominant gene in most brugs.Thats why when you cross colors the majority will still be white or near white.The more seeds you plant the better the chances of getting colored hybrids.
I want to see a Culebra, I'm not sure what they look like and I'm also confused by the "Aureas". They have small blooms with short calyxes don't they? Eric, we need photos, lol.
Cala,
Well I will most certainly post some pictures of a few Culebra's here shortly. I must confess the Culebra is very easy to set seed to from my experience and for the pollen being as skimpy as it generally is its not half bad at setting a seed pod on another hybrid either; although, I must confess I would not want to have to have to rely on just Culebra pollen. Thanks very much for the information on the Culebra Kyle. That encourages me all the more that I saved a few of these for my hybridizing program this year. I must confess I was going to use a few more than I am down to now, but I kept having people talk me out of them. If the seed is that valuable then I will make sure to continue pollinating each and every last flower on my Culebra's with aurea type pollen.
Cala, I think I remember Arlene posting a picture of a beautiful Culebra that she grew. Maybe she could post it again.That is if I'm correct and not just having a memory lapse. LOL