Hybridizing basics

F1 generation is the result of two parents of differing backgrounds. An example would be Rothkirch x Goldenes Kornett. The purpose of the F1 generation is to grow enough seedlings to produce a large F2 population sufficient in numbers to provide for meaningful selection. Example of F2 would be #27(Rothkirch x GK) x 42 (Rothkirch x Goldenes Kornett). The numbers here could signify the order in which they bloomed or some other criteria. A good base line F2 population (2,000-5000 seedlings).

(Goldenes Kornett x Rothkirch) = F1 (minimum grow out for mixed colors150-200) [Pink x Pink minimum grow out 50-100]

F2 = 25(GKxR) x 125(GKxR)
F2 = 125(GK x R) x 25(GKxR)
F2 = 137 (GK x R) x 25 (GKxR)

The idea behind your F2 crosses above is to have enough F2 seedlings going enough seedlings to make a meaningful selection. 2000-5000 being a good number to shoot for.

Now, there are still hybridizers who only want to select for one or two traits and can get by with less in the way of seedlings. However, take that advice with a note of caution: Think how many times Rothkirch has been crossed to Ocre to produce a myriad of named seedlings over the years. This is a simple F1 cross. Ecuador Pink x Rothkirch or Rothkirch x Ecuador Pink...another F1 cross. I think we have made it far enough that F1 crosses will not suffice for much longer with the exception perhaps of pure species x pure species F1 crosses like perhaps Goldenes Kornett (pure aurea wild) x Wild Versicolor Yellow.... I mean there is a chance here that besides hybrid vigor attained one may also get a double yellow or even orange out of such a cross. Still, you have to grow enough of that F1 to select out for the best. The earlier you start selecting the more you are inadvertently selecting against. Now, my math may be a bit off, but if you wanted to do a simple backcross for 4 generations you would get something that was 15/16 as pure as the original parent that you were breeding back to. What is the purpose here? It allows you to select for the genes and traits you desire or add them while attempting to purify your Brugmansia. Now, for others who are more inclined to the impossible, there is a wide world of experimentation that has been done with Brugmansia as well as Datura. If you simply look at the potato and how the cut style approach combined with a bit of agar utilized as a replacement for the style to allow the pollen to travel down and into the ovary.... . Now to get off topic even more...grafted seedlings can bypass the juvenile state that is associated with associated with seedlings when they are grafted onto mature specimens. Take this a bit further and some species become more susceptible to foreign pollens when they are grafted onto the plant to which you would like to cross them....there is tons more out there on the subject for those who like to read:
InVitro Plant Breeding by Acram Taji
Principles of Plant Genetics and Breeding by George Acquaah

Nice to see some educational post here again.

So where are you going to settle when you eventually come back to the States? I imagine you'll need a little acreage to keep up with your experiments. Don't look in California. The State is trying to burn itself down again. Brugmansia aren't crazy about smoke and soot. Florida seems to be great for Brugs in the winter. The pictures that come out of there are incredible.

I'm glad you're having fun with it your Brug breeding.

Mary

Besides the great information on breeding. Which I have to read when I am not so tired. But your picture. I know i use WOW a lot...but WOW . I thought I had to space them out a lot more. I will try that also. Eric what do you do come wintertime??

I second that Wow ...just love those leaves!
is there any way (looking at those leaves) that you can judge by the leaves how much Aurea is in the seedling? ...I know that they are all so veriable but if the leaf is heavily toothed does that mean there is a fair dose of it in there? ...please excuse newbie ignorance here.

Eric, please tell us what do you do with your plants for the winter???
Do you take cuttings, or a really huge green house?

Linda Kay

I pull their seed pods off and plant those for next years crop. If I'm selecting for cold tolerance, I let them freeze back into the ground and see what sprouts back next year. Sometimes I just graft several branches onto one tree or oddly enough, sometimes I start out by grafting my seedlings to a tree. A lot depends on what I'm experimenting with and what I have the time to experiment with. Right now I'm doing a lot of experimentation with grafting. I plan on doing even more with grafting in the years to come. You can dig the top layer of clay out...providing you live where your soil is mostly clay and fill this with peat. It makes pulling up your plants much easier. Never mind simply planting your pots in the ground. There are a million and one variations on this and you have to decide which methods or method works best for you and your soil/climate.

What sort of PH would that give you?

I agree with Mary about this fantastic post. I've been away from home for almost two weeks and was glad to encounter this and other new posts. Now maybe I can satisfy my curiosity about some aspects of hybridization.
In the aurea species, how are the alleles for color ranked from dominant to least dominant? Is there any literature devoted exclusively to Brugs?

Eric, was there some kind of seismic event in your garden?
You're sideways!
You're not chewing Brug cud these days are you?
I realize you are on the other side of the world. I just don't want the change in your pocket pelting me on my side of the planet.
;-)

Your dominance answer:
If you cross a pink to an orange you will get mostly whites. We will also get whites with tinges of pink or tinges of orange. You may get a few if your lucky that will have both pink and orange expressed or even whites that are sometimes tinged with orange or pink. What this is describing to me is not dominance or recessive traits at all, but quantitative traits whereby environmental influences can also play a role in which color or colors get expressed. I'm not saying that qualitative genes are not also present and I welcome anyone to prove me wrong. The easy way of getting oranges is to cross orange to orange. If you want pinks cross pinks to pinks. If you want a mix of colors grow out a huge bed and be happy with one or two that may be a mix that is bright enough to make your day. Janet Reno, one of my early hybrids will sometimes throw out flowers with a tinge of pink around her lips. Some hybrids will hide one color and rarely show the others that may be present. Others like Georgia Peach will start out yellow and stay yellow for a bit and then fade to pink or peach. Amber Rose is another hybrid of mine with both yellow and pink genes. If you've made it this far in my ramblings then you may have realized that I don't have an absolute answer for you as it is still beyond me. I continue to have fun crossing pinks to oranges and oranges to pinks or even pinks that harbor other colors to yellows which show orange and the like. I like a challenge and perhaps one day I will figure it all out after I've read enough books. What I can tell you is if you like easy then always go with like colors. If someone else knows more than this I'd love to learn as there is much that I don't know. I do know that I have fun learning though.

Thank you, Eric for sharing all the valuable info. on hybridizing brugs. My question for you, what happen when a double pink's pollen is crossed with a single pink? That is a F2 with pink color is likely, will some offsprings will turn out double? others single?
Currently I've an unknown double pink crossed with a Sauvolens white, and two other single pink. I'm waiting for the seeds harvest this winter.
Kim

Kim, first things first. If you cross a double pink with a single pink whether their offspring are F1 or F2 will depend on the parentage of the double and single pink. If both the double pink and the single pink came from the same initial cross such as Dalen's Pink Amour (pod parent) x Rosalie (pollen parent) then crossing these two siblings which are your F1 generation will give you your F2 generation.
Now, if you have a double pink crossed with a suaveolens white then you will count those seedlings produced as your F1. Crossing those seedlings together will yield you your F2. So to recap: F1 = double pink (pod parent) x white suaveolens (dad/pollen parent)... the seedlings in that pod are your F1. Crossing any seedling in the F1 to another F1 seedling will give you an F2. Now, if your breeding for pink you simply take 2 or 3 of your pink seedlings and cross them together and hope for a darker pink. If your also hoping for a double then you can cross any doubles you may get to another single or even a double. Chances are that you will only get singles, but as with everything you never know for 100% sure as mutations, etc. can and do happen. Chances are slim with this cross though so don't get your hopes of. Personally, I might have chosen a suaveolens with a bit of aurea influence for this experiment. Something like Isabella x L'amour or L'amour x Isabella. If your asking for advice on which ones to keep and grow as you don't have room to grow them all but would like a few to be pinks keep your pink x pink to grow out. Is your single pink a suaveolens as well? Doubles come from a mixture of aurea and versicolor genes. Mixing too much suaveolens into the mix will deter your success with getting any doubles. Everything depends on the genetic make up of your parents... both sets. If you cross a pure species aurea with a pure species versicolor you can get a double. Is it likely? No. Is it worth making the cross? Depends on your level of fun and adventure. I use to lean towards multi-hybrids with opposite colors.... you get a significant amount of variation in flower shape, calyx shape, leaf characteristics, etc. from a single cross that has been severely mixed up. Rolling leave, serrated leaves, smooth leaves, and every nuance in-between. Crosses have been so mixed up and so little work has been done to increase the genetic pool of pure species that everyone clamors for a rare Rothkirch which is a pure aurea. Why? Because no real work has been done with pure aurea species or versicolor for that matter. Sure, we have the old Milk 'N' Honey and a few others, but not many that can claim the status of being a pure any species anymore. Realizing this and realizing that we make it harder to sort out what is a mixture or what is truly tied to a species is nearly impossible without doing some serious hybridizing with pure species. To this end I have sought to work with just one pure species. The elusive aurea is my choice as I like small fragrant flowers that pack a punch. I also like the fact that they take much less time to develop a seed pod than another elusive species... the true versicolor. I live in less than optimal conditions so I need to take on a project that I can actually make some strides with. I just lucked out that this species is also one that I love the most. Hopefully, as I get more into breeding pure species aurea's I will learn much more about the hidden genetics of the aurea. In a similar light, while it is nice to have others helping me by making similar crosses, especially those who don't have the time or growing season to work with the versicolor... I'd like to see people in warmer area's or with green houses working to improve the pure versicolor gene pool by crossing the few versicolors we have left with each other as well as the few hybrids such as Milk N Honey that are still pure versicolors. You loose a lot of genetic diversity when you only work with multi-hybrids. Now, thats not to say I don't love multi-hybrids and wish to continue working with them. I do and will continue to work with multi-hybrids. I just want to say that I've helped increase the foundation upon which our multi-hybrids arose and provide people with some beautiful pure specimens that have been much improved to continue to work with. Enough rambling for now. Almost everything I know I've learned from listening to other hybridizers so don't get a false idea and think I know everything. I don't know much at all except that I love Brugmansia that sweep you off your feet with their fragrance and their beauty. White is a color often overlooked as it is so common in crosses. Never toss a white simply because.... truly look at it and see if its form and substance have merit. Let it fill the night with its fragrance and determine then if you might want to cross it back to another parent of color or simply keep it for your moon garden.

Eric, last year I used a Sauvolens white x unknown pink = This offspring which yielded this first lovely flush of flower back in Sept. this year.

This year, I used the above F1 (?) and crossed yet with an unknown double pink, next generation then becomes F2. (?) The crosses are all jumbled up since there is at least one unknown parentage involved.

Question; Milk & Honey is 'Pure' versicolor brug? Whose crosses are they? I need to go back and learn what are different species brugs, aborea, sauv, versicolor ect. Any info. given will be appreciated.

Eric, what is the reason you recommend that people in warmer climates work with versicolor? And which warmer climates? According to Preissel and Preissel, native versicolor habitat is restricted to the tropical regions of Ecuador. Are versicolor Brugs more cold sensitive?

Another question, do you know of any other Brug reference books besides the Preissel and Preissel and Monika Gottschalk's?

Ok ...I think I get it ...I have peach versicolor and yellow versicolor,
and am about to get an Equador pink ...so I cross the Equador pink to the yellow and the peach versicolor and then cross those seedlings back to each other and back to the Equador Pink ...then grow those out to see what are the best colours then cross back to the other best colours?(3rd generation of grown out pods) ...you can't cross a pure versicolor to another pure versicolor can you ?...so the thing I am wondering is Equador Pink a versicolor with other genes in it? because if it is a pure versicolor ...it wouldn't work with other pure versicolor? or will it? ...sorry I know I am dog paddling here but I really get the idea that you will need to grow out a whole pod of seed to perhaps pick the one or two to go on with.
So if you can't breed pure versicolor to pure versicolor what genes can you throw in to enable you to "share the genes"
I have a mature plant that is a cross between Bucks Fizz and Bert ...
would that work? ...as we have limited breeding plants here ...it's a bit hard ...but the basic species are pure and that is an advantage I think.
The day we have the absolute answer to everything is the day we lose the quest for perfection ...it's the challenge that spurs us on isn't it?
About the doubles ...use the double as a pod parent ... it gives it a better chance.
Thankyou very much Eric ...I think that someone with your experience is priceless to us ...^_^

Chrissi, I think the idea is to work with pure versicolors or to get pure versicolors. There has to be enough genetic diversity within the versicolor gene pool to get those differences I read about in Preissel and Preissel. So it should be possible to make some crosses with what you have. Eric, is the aim to bring out characteristics in a species that would be hidden when hybridized with other species or with multi-hybrids?

Bettydee, You've nailed it. You can work with any pure species and the idea is to bring out hidden qualitative and quantitative traits within a single species. When you introduce other species into your mix your muddling up the mix to such an extent that uncovering or increasing those genes to a large degree is very hard and you still will not know for sure whether your are dealing with genes of one species or a phenotypic expression due to the mixing of different species.

Chrissy: Ecuador Pink (pod parent) x Yellow versicolor (pollen parent) we will assign this cross the letters EY to each seedling and number each of them. So, if you you 150 seeds you will have EY1--EY150. Crossing any EY# to another EY# will give you your F2 generation. You decide which traits you most desire and which seedlings show those traits the best when making your F2 cross. If you want a flower that has substance then you look for the thickest flowers and breed those two seedlings together. As many traits may be quantitative you may have to work for more than one or two generations.

Now, back-crossing is another method many you may wish to employ when you suspect or know one parent carries the trait you are after. You take the best EY25 or whatever the number is for that trait and cross it back to Ecuador Pink or Yellow versicolor. If you get something novel and are not sure which parent it came from then you breed back to both parents.

Out crossing this same cross of EY to Peach versicolor could give you EY (pod) x Peach (pollen) seedlings labeled EY25xP or you could make P x EY25.

Thanks for clarifying the reasons for working with species. Now, what is the reason you recommend that people in warmer climates work with versicolor? And which warmer climates? According to Preissel and Preissel, native versicolor habitat is restricted to the tropical regions of Ecuador. Are versicolor Brugs more cold sensitive? Why versicolor? They are my least favorite Brugs. I think it's because of that long neck.

Another question, do you know of any other Brug reference books besides the Preissel and Preissel and Monika Gottschalk's?

Bump...............I would be intrested in this answer as well since I live in a very warm climate....♪ ♫ ☼

Bettydee,
I believe Tonny's new brugmansia book is ready:
http://www.surrow-hansen.com/index.html

Last I talked with Eric, he said he may be moving.
May be why we have not heard from him lately.
Alice

Alice,
Thanks for the tip on Tonny's book. I just bought it! Now to find the time to read it. LOL

I saw a post by Eric a few days ago. Maybe when he has the time, he can answer my question. Moving is always so hectic.