# Questions to you breeders



## reivilos (Mar 10, 2013)

Hi,
Is there any good reference to paph 
breeding?
For instance i'd like to know:
- when to self
- when to sib
- whether reverse cross is the same
- which crosses are ugly-looking
- which crosses don't flower
- which crosses don't grow
- which crosses don't germinate
- time to maturity
- which crosses were never attempted again.
Thanks


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## Rick (Mar 10, 2013)

It depends on your breeding goal Reivilos.

Are you breeding species for conservation, or hybrids to win shows?


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## Ozpaph (Mar 11, 2013)

You should read the Orchid Digest Vol 77-1 (current). The article by Gruss and Rohrl has lots of insight into breeding parvi hybrids.


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## reivilos (Mar 11, 2013)

Rick said:


> It depends on your breeding goal Reivilos.
> 
> Are you breeding species for conservation, or hybrids to win shows?



Mostly to have the best-looking flowers and fine hybrids!
That's for me only, as we don't have a proper award system here in France.
Species are readily available in Europe,
but not hybrids. So why not create the ones I miss?
Olivier


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## fibre (Mar 11, 2013)

That's a good starting point IMO. Whitch ones do you miss?


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## Rick (Mar 11, 2013)

reivilos said:


> Mostly to have the best-looking flowers and fine hybrids!
> That's for me only, as we don't have a proper award system here in France.
> Species are readily available in Europe,
> but not hybrids. So why not create the ones I miss?
> Olivier



There may be a compilation of work out there on this, but I am not aware of it.

However one thing to consider in hybridization that I frequently see is a wide range of results within the same cross. A lot of a cross may be ugly, but you only see the best when people show off the pictures. 

Hadley Cash (Marriot Orchids) gave a presentation to our society that brought up some of your questions. He would show result of cross A X B = C, but then if you ask how many offspring from that cross look like C the answer could be as little as 10-15%. So what did the other 85% look like? some crippled, some too ugly to share, some ho-hum......

But when you see most of these presentations you think that AXB gives you 100% C. But on the other hand Hadley new the % positive yeilds from a lot of different cross combinations.


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## ehanes7612 (Mar 11, 2013)

antec labs website might have some useful info...the paph book by hasagawa and koopowitz (its outdated but has breeding up to the mid 90's), slipperorcid info by matt peterson (dont as me for links )
from my general experience and what i have heard from breeders
parvi x multiflorals can produce a lot of offspring but most die off in the first couple years (Dollgoldii, Gloria Naugle)
brachy x multifloral..very very difficult to flower
multifloral x multifloral (primary ) give good production but take a long time to grow..adductum crosses are offering great potential in compactness and flower quality, roth breeds with anything but large plants limit the number you can raise from seedling...but with roth you will tend to get the highest chance of good quality and most predictable flowers..phillipinense is so variable that you never know what you are going to get with the progeny, ..the more you delve into multifloral complexes the more variability you will have (i.e. shin yi pride x lady isabel). 
Sanderianum will tend to dominate in the sepals , spots and color and give length to petals abut sanderianum is a difficult parent to set pod to..best to use it as pollen 
Mastersianum can create nice hybrids (if you can are lucky enough to have one and have one that breeds), as it is one of only two species that can create the apple green color to its hybrids
armeniacum and micranthum make rally nice hybrids ...armeniacum tends to dominate (with multis and brachys ) but not necessarily with other parvis, micranthum has nice colors it can impart on its progeny
the focus these days with many breeders is tending towards creating albas and breeding with hangianum (which so far has shown to dominate in size, form and shape).. sanderianum breeding is becoming part of a broader multifloral complex breeding (and produces much less viable seed than the primary hybrids)..despite the hoopla about sanderianum hybrids , much of the breeding has produced less than expected results (small spindly flowers with ragged sepals)..so breeders are turning more to combining with other multi's to give chunkier flowers (i.e. Monsoon Temptation)
selfing is a default (only one of alba species in the collection) or to express other recessive genes more readily or to saturate with more color
as far as reverse crosses or knowing the difference you would probably have to flower out hundreds if not thousands to notice any difference
and as far as crosses being attempted again ..you can get a feel for that to the popularity of a cross (Dollgoldii, St Gratrix, Gloria Naugle, roth hybrids, Berenice, Michael Koop, Sanders Pride will always be tried again over and over as new source material pops up)

one thing to keep in mind is that if a cross is known to produce little offspring that mature to flowering but garner a lot of awards, then you may want to stick with creating that cross (dollgoldii, gloria naugle)..a cross like St Swithin and many sanderianum primary hybrids would fit into the category that Rick describes (as they produce a lot of strong growing plants that reach maturity with average to mediocre flowers)...then you have Monsoon Temptation that grows well out of flask (but low seed viability to begin with) and creates a high percentage of great flowers (not many awards yet because its a relatively new cross)

so if you want to be a breeder , you have to consider your most limiting factor..for most of us, its space..and if thats the case and you want a high potential for award..breed compact (with adductum, parvi, st gratrix, etc)


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## reivilos (Mar 11, 2013)

Thank you both for your answers.
In fact I've got both Hasegawa/Koopowitz books. Though I
find them very enjoyable I feel they're
not complete. I like slipperorchid.info
too but there are still holes.


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## NYEric (Mar 12, 2013)

Slippertalk!


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## TyroneGenade (Mar 13, 2013)

Hello,

I thought the hasagawa and koopowitz book was very good and gave me some interesting ideas. It did answer your question about what parents make ugly crosses and which lineages tend to combine to make good looking plants. Its chapter on complex crosses (bulldogs) was quite small but the message was very clear: its largely hit or miss.

The best way, I think, to get some idea of which parents are good parents, is to use the RHS registry or OrchidWhiz to see what parents have been used a lot. Generally, only good crosses (good clones!) get registered so the more registrations there are for a parent tells you something about how good a parent it is. Complex orchids a gamble but if you know something about the parents the rewards can be good. Last year I bought a cross of Winston Churchill and Provocation. Both are good breeders so this seemed to me like a good cross to take a chance on. Time will tell if I won the jackpot or lucked out...


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## Drorchid (Mar 13, 2013)

As a plant breeder, a general rule of thumb:

Choosing the parents is probably one of the most important steps, when making a cross.

Excellent Parent x Excellent Parent -> Excellent Progeny

Ugly Parent x Excellent Parent -> most are Ugly, and the few that are okay, are usually not an improvement over the Excellent Parent

Ugly Parent x Ugly Parent -> almost all will be Ugly

Another rule of thumb, is that when you cross two parents that are "closer" to each other, in terms of genetics your outcome will have a higher chance of being successful, so when you cross say two awarded Maudiae types, you know that your outcome will be good to excellent (more than 40-50% of your seedlings will be "excellent", and the rest of the seedlings are probably still "good" with just a small percentage that may be "duds"), but if you cross say a Maudiae type to a Brachy, you may end up with a lot of "duds". One good thing about these far crosses, is that if something is good, it usually is very good and "different", but the chance of getting a good seedling, may be less than 5%.

And my last rule of thumb (I have many more), is that it is better to out-cross than to self. The only time I ever "self" a plant, is if it is "one of a kind", so if it is truly is way better than anything else (an example would be our awarded tetraploid clone of Phrag. besseae 'Rob's Choice' AM/AOS), or like when mentioned earlier, if it is a rare color form (say an albino form), and it is the only one that you have to work with.

I would say, I have gained my knowledge from experience (I have been breeding orchids now for 12 years), talking to other breeders, reading articles in say the Orchid Digest, and the AOS Orchids magazine, and going to Orchid shows/meetings, like the Paph. Guild the WOC etc.

Robert


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## reivilos (Mar 23, 2013)

Thank you guys for your inputs.
Olivier


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## PaphMadMan (Mar 23, 2013)

From a classical genetics perspective, another reason for inbreeding (self, sib or backcross) is to bring out recessive traits. If you cross 2 unrelated plants, and the seedlings are healthy and reasonably good but some desirable characteristic of a parent was lost, inbreeding may allow that trait to show up again in the next generation. A simple example is an alba flower crossed with a colored one. All colored flowers in the first generation. Self or sib cross then gives 1/4 alba in the second generation.


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