C. trianae (good story too!)

[Happypaphy7]

Because many jungle collected plants within the last 30 years had been virused, so the scientific community assumed viral rates at 30% or more.

Also many flowered back then with marks on flowers (like the famous art tulips) that were unexplainable. Now we know what those markings are.

I realize that there are many different types of virus affecting orchids, but do you know if orchids (let's limit the topic to orchids, not tulips or other plants just for ease of discussion) collected from the wild came with either CymMV or ORSV?

 

[DrLeslieEe]

I realize that there are many different types of virus affecting orchids, but do you know if orchids (let's limit the topic to orchids, not tulips or other plants just for ease of discussion) collected from the wild came with either CymMV or ORSV?

I don't really know that information as I'm not in the field of insitu collection. But I can find out from my South American contacts and revisit this topic when I get an answer. Please stay tune.

 

[lanthier]

HI All,

I do not have the grow space to allow for the virused plants to live out their lives. Most of mine were mules or showed evidence in the blooms, so no big loss. If you are keeping the virused plants that perform well, you have far better care techniques/luck than I do. We dispose of all virused plant in the Smithsonian Orchid Collection in Washington DC, where I used to volunteer before Covid. We just cannot take the chance of virus ravaging the collection.

Cheers all!

 

[Happypaphy7]

I don't really know that information as I'm not in the field of insitu collection. But I can find out from my South American contacts and revisit this topic when I get an answer. Please stay tune.

Alright. I would love to know if the named two virus are present in the wild orchids.

 

[Happypaphy7]

HI All,

I do not have the grow space to allow for the virused plants to live out their lives. Most of mine were mules or showed evidence in the blooms, so no big loss. If you are keeping the virused plants that perform well, you have far better care techniques/luck than I do. We dispose of all virused plant in the Smithsonian Orchid Collection in Washington DC, where I used to volunteer before Covid. We just cannot take the chance of virus ravaging the collection.

Cheers all!

I think this is the best practice, and ideally if everyone did this, then, the prevalence of virus would be much reduced.

 

[monocotman]

Just as an aside on viruses. I have worked as a plant breeder all my life and in the last 10 years we as a company have become increasingly interested in viruses. My particular crop is barley. Here there is one gene (yd2) that confers true tolerance to one of the main viruses in barley, barley yellow dwarf virus, transmitted by aphids. If the plant has this gene, the viral load can be the same as in a susceptible plant but the plant does not exhibit any symptoms ( yellowing leaves, dwarfing and eventually death). This resistance was discovered in Ethiopian barley lines in the 1950’s and has been crossed into mainstream varieties.
There is also a new resistance gene, yd4, which has been crossed in from a closely related species, hordeum bulbosum. Here the virus cannot replicate in the plant and dies out.
In addition to these two known genes there are several others that confer a lower level of tolerance to this virus.
This sort of arms race will be going on all across the natural world In plants and animals. It is part of the natural order of things.

 

[DrLeslieEe]

Very interesting. I wonder if some of these positive viral cattleyas contain similar genes that can confer tolerance or reduce viral replication. That could explain the long term survival rate of these hardy heirlooms.

 

[monocotman]

Almost certainly it will be!
Part of the evolutionary arms race that has been going on for millions of years.

 

[Happypaphy7]

Just as an aside on viruses. I have worked as a plant breeder all my life and in the last 10 years we as a company have become increasingly interested in viruses. My particular crop is barley. Here there is one gene (yd2) that confers true tolerance to one of the main viruses in barley, barley yellow dwarf virus, transmitted by aphids. If the plant has this gene, the viral load can be the same as in a susceptible plant but the plant does not exhibit any symptoms ( yellowing leaves, dwarfing and eventually death). This resistance was discovered in Ethiopian barley lines in the 1950’s and has been crossed into mainstream varieties.
There is also a new resistance gene, yd4, which has been crossed in from a closely related species, hordeum bulbosum. Here the virus cannot replicate in the plant and dies out.
In addition to these two known genes there are several others that confer a lower level of tolerance to this virus.
This sort of arms race will be going on all across the natural world In plants and animals. It is part of the natural order of things.

Thanks for sharing this information. I love reading about stuff like this!
I wonder if this kind of discovery and application would be done with orchids, though. Food crops are essential to humans for survival and also for economic value.
Orchids are bred mostly for flowers and sold, done. I know there are scientists studying quite a bit about orchids (mainly certain Dendrobiums and Phalaenopsis only as far as I know since these two are the ones that bring the most money in the trade). I hope to see better breeding practice for disease resistance and such, but I doubt there is enough incentive to get that done.

 

[monocotman]

It should trickle down eventually when costs get lower when technology becomes routine and ‘old’.
In the plant breeding industry we are piggy backing on gene marker technology that was originally developed for human medicine.
Just when that will happen is anyone’s guess.