Hybridizing - Knowing the Parents Genetic Background

When I am considering making a cross I like to know as much as I can about the genetic background of the parents as I can reasonably find out about them. For example, how many; suaveolens, aurea, versicolor and x. candida genes are in the parents background. This way I have some idea of what may be expressed in the seedlings when it comes to; flower size & shape, possible colors and growth habit.

Here is a screen capture of a spread sheet that I made using Mango Crush and L'Amour. I do have a seedling from this cross that holds some promise of being registered and released. It is being trialed in several zones this year to determine its fate.

I am sorry about the small print of the pic, but when I try to copy and paste it straight to the post it loses its formatting and you can't make any sense out of it. If I can get a better one I will post it.

This message was edited Feb 7, 2007 7:42 PM

You are so far over my head!! I just got into brugs last year, so am still learning a lot. I find the background of the different plants very interesting, and am honestly just getting interested enough to pursue genetic backgrounds about different characteristics. Thanks for sharing with us :-) Have bookmarked this for further study .

Sharon

It starts to be interesting. It is great to see different hybridizers approach to their work. What a good idea to make a spreadsheet over the percentage of species/ hybrids genes of your crosses. I love statistics and make them over things as economics, demand etc in my business. I also use them in private, where it is fun to predict, how money can be saved, without anyone really is going to miss something by it. Its a good predicting tool. I have never attempted it when hybridizing, because here my mind mainly works in pictures, but I use to see the mix of the mother plants before me. The artistic brain half seem to run solo here. Does it make any sense? When you have added the percentage of species in the parents into a total, do you then later write down the variations in percentage for each seedling?

i hope these thread/s is what u are looking for... sorry this is all i found.

Tonny, i hope u did not mind, i saved these long time ago for future reference/s or referrals.

topics on hybrid .........
http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/43387/ , http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/265143.html , http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/43387/#new , http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/190872/

on parentage ....
http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/185991.html , http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/363316/

ma vie

Sharon, here is a few more links:

On compatible and incompatible crosses:
http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/201771/


On how to work with visual planches:
http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/691497/

This message was edited Feb 8, 2007 9:44 AM

Too cool. This is so interesting!

David, now that you have a hybrid trialed in several zones it could be fun, if you could ad data on the spreadsheet about weather, fertilizing, soil type, garden position etc and combine those to see, which environment is best for it . I haven' t worked much with Office spreadsheets or access databases, but I guess, that it should be possible to ad the relevant data and corelate them by doing a database inquiry. Does it sound crazy?
:)

I've done some bookmarking also. My first attempts at hybridizing last year were learning experiences. I found that the bees had a better success rate than I. Thanks David, MaVie Rose and Tonny for this information!

Thanks for all the links! Glad we're not busy here at work so I can go study :-)

Thanks David, MaVie Rose and Tonny for posting this information, I'm sure it will be so meaningful to those who wish to hybridize.

Judy

Thank all of you for your kind comments. I started this thread to try to help those who are just starting to become involved in the hybridization of brugmansia.

MaVie Rose, thank you so much for including those links. It will help greatly to have all relevant information available in one place.

Tonny, I guess it is the "Accountant" in me that leads me to use numbers in record keeping. I like the planchette method that you use, it will make a good companion to the spreadsheet numbers.

I lost many records concerning my brug crosses when my computer crashed back in the early fall of 2004. I also lost many pictures of my mother who passed away that fall also. Now, I make a disc copy of all of my photos and a back up of all files on a regular basis.

The seedling from this cross has not been trialed in the different zones yet, that will happen this summer. And you have made some very good suggestions to include the weather, fertilizing, soil type, garden position, etc. It will be easy to include in the spreadsheet and I will be able to make charts and trend lines. I don't like using the Access database program, I really hate it. LOL It is difficult for me to use that program. I am much more comfortable and experienced using the spreedsheet programs.

As far as recording the variations in percentage for each seedling, all my information was lost in the computer crash. So I will have to wait for future crosses to record that information.

Again, I really like the planchette idea. I plan to combine it with the percentage spreadsheet, I am going to try to include pictures of the plants in the spreadsheet.

I'll come back and post pictures of the cross sometime later.

Here are some pictures of the seedling that is worked up in the spreadsheet.

The cross is Mango Crush x L'Amour; Seedling # 1

This is a face shot and a side shot of the bloom.

This is a shot of the plant and blooms. Notice the very nice "bell" shape of the bottom right bloom.

WOW you really figure out the percentages right down the line. It would be interesting if after growing out all the seeds in 1 seed pod of a mixed cross, to classify each seedling as to its characteristics to see what the breakdown is as far as what parts came from which species. And if certain characteristic were by far the dominant ones in most of the seedlings, like if a majority of seedlings had the suav tendrils which won out genetically over the longer aurea tendrils in its background. Or if in the end, in a mixed cross, you could not really predict what traits a majority of the seedlings would show, that it was more helter skelter and varied among them all. Or say in a predominantly aurea cross with some suav, if the aurea traits would be the strongest across the board or if a particular suav trait would repeatedly be present in a majority of seedlings.

I just love the shape in that last picture, David. Very nice!

Kell,

Thanks for your comments on this cross. I LOVE the bell shape on that bloom also. There are several pictures of this cross at another brug forum, that I can't mention. It does have a good color combination. One of the better known brug hybridizers commented that the combination of orange and pink is rare in brugs. So even if this brug is not released, it may be a good one to use in a breeding program.

You hit the nail right on the head with your questions and comments about observing what characteristics are dominate in a cross. Not only do I want to breed a very good brug, I want to know what the dominate genes are; for example, are suav. genes dominant over versicolor, etc. That is why I made up the spread sheet breaking down the percentage of each species genes. There may be long time brug hybridizers out there that have this knowledge in their heads and/or a hard copy record of it also, but I want to see "the numbers" behind the observations.

In my humble opinion, to start this quest, one will have to start with brugs that are pure species or brugs that have their entire genetic background known. It won't work with the Mango Crush x L'Amour cross because some of the grand parents are unknown.

This is something that I am not going to be working on in the near future, it may be 2 - 4 years down the line before I really get into this. My main priority right now is to work with the seedlings that have come from my late Mother's lone brug, which is 'Butterfly. There are no other brugs in close proximity to her plant. The nearest brugs are mine, which is about 7 seven miles away "as the bee flies". LOL