Sarracenia genetics SIMPLIFIED:outcrossing versus selfing
Apr 7, 2024 13:19:21 GMT -5
stevebooth, plantman, and 3 more like this
Post by meizzwang on Apr 7, 2024 13:19:21 GMT -5
Are you interested in breeding Sarracenia but you're lost with the most basic NERDY, GLASSES-FOGGING terminology and don't quite understand how all them genetics work? Don't worry, you don't really need to know that stuff like a scientist does to be successful! I personally don't understand much more than the basics, if that makes you feel better. That said, you still do need to know the very basics if you want to be more calculated with your breeding efforts.
If you already know the basics, I still invite you to read this thread as it has info that you can't find anywhere else. That said, if want to really know the "secrets" of breeding, I highly recommend checking this thread out when you have time, it's quite comprehensive: sarracenia.proboards.com/thread/4004/seedling-selection
The best breeders out there, in my opinion, never are asking others whether they think a specific cross will yield a good result. Instead, from years of breeding (or literally scouring the internet obsessively and learning from other peoples' results), they have put together patterns and have cultivated their own intuition on what crosses can potentially yield the next highly sought after cultivar (cultivar is a fancy word for a select clone or individual that everyone wants cuz it's so bad Gluteus Maximus...trying to keep it PG-13 here folks).
Switching gears, below is a write up that I sent a customer who wanted to understand what outcrossing means. This explanation focuses only on leucophylla var. alba (solid white form of leucophylla) as an example but the concepts can be applied to several other color forms. Hopefully, this gives you a better understanding of what outcrossing means versus selfing. This is as easy as I can make it:
Regarding pollination, a plant can self pollinate (use pollen from itself to fertilize the flower and produce seeds) or it can outcross, which means take pollen from a genetically different plant to fertilize the flower to produce seeds.
The alba trait (very white trait) in leucophylla is recessive, meaning the genes that "come together" to make the plant look that way are usually not expressed unless there is a certain "combination" of those genes put together by their parents. Easier explanation, albas are easy to make when self pollinated because recessive genes are expressed more frequently with selfed plants. Same can be said when you cross siblings with each other that both carry a lot of recessive (hidden) traits for the alba expression. The more you self or do sibling crosses (this is called inbreeding), the higher the frequency of recessive traits, such as the alba trait.
The downside to inbreeding is bad mutations: this is why humans who interbreed (eg. mate with cousins, sisters, brothers, parents, or self if that's even possible, etc) are typically more susceptible to disease, mental issues, missing limbs at birth or extra limbs at birth, infertility, asymmetrical faces and body structures, etc. This is because humans have evolved to outcross, or mate with gentically different individuals. The same is true with Sarracenia!
Conversely, when you outcross (for example, take two genetically different leucophylla var. albas parent plants and cross them together), most of the times you get regular looking offspring because the combination of the genes in these crosses tend to hide the alba trait. In other words, a huge number of outcrossed albas results in regular forms of leucophylla.
This is why S. leucophylla var. alba 'Rod's favorite' (the very first outcrossed alba clone to be publicly documented) is significant: both S. leucophylla var. alba MKL42 and S. leucophylla Hurricane creek white clone F (parents of Rod's favorite) express the alba trait, yet combining them together (the resulting seedlings are then considered outcrossed) results in a majority of alba offspring. Why? While I don't know the answer with certainty, the breeding work suggests both parents have likely been either sibling crossed or self pollinated for several generations before they were "born", so the frequency of the hidden alba trait in their genetic makeup is higher than most other clones.
Self pollinating albas will create a high frequency of alba offspring compared to outcrossing, but they will resemble the parents and not necessarily be superior to the parents. If you do find a better looking one than the parents, it's often at the cost of increased disease susceptibility or lower vigor, or both. Outcrossing yields a much lower chance of getting alba offspring (recessive traits get hidden and aren't expressed), but when you find nice albas from such crosses, they tend to be more vigorous, better looking (more symmetrical), whiter, more resistant to diseases if the breeder is selecting for that trait, and overall better performers than either of the parents.
It has taken many generations of selective breeding to come up with exceptional alba clones, such as this one that colors up relatively easily, is super tall (slightly taller than 3' in height), is incredibly vigorous, and is super white:
I hope that's not too complicated to understand, if you need clarification or want to add to your experience to this thread, feel free to post away!
If you already know the basics, I still invite you to read this thread as it has info that you can't find anywhere else. That said, if want to really know the "secrets" of breeding, I highly recommend checking this thread out when you have time, it's quite comprehensive: sarracenia.proboards.com/thread/4004/seedling-selection
The best breeders out there, in my opinion, never are asking others whether they think a specific cross will yield a good result. Instead, from years of breeding (or literally scouring the internet obsessively and learning from other peoples' results), they have put together patterns and have cultivated their own intuition on what crosses can potentially yield the next highly sought after cultivar (cultivar is a fancy word for a select clone or individual that everyone wants cuz it's so bad Gluteus Maximus...trying to keep it PG-13 here folks).
Switching gears, below is a write up that I sent a customer who wanted to understand what outcrossing means. This explanation focuses only on leucophylla var. alba (solid white form of leucophylla) as an example but the concepts can be applied to several other color forms. Hopefully, this gives you a better understanding of what outcrossing means versus selfing. This is as easy as I can make it:
Regarding pollination, a plant can self pollinate (use pollen from itself to fertilize the flower and produce seeds) or it can outcross, which means take pollen from a genetically different plant to fertilize the flower to produce seeds.
The alba trait (very white trait) in leucophylla is recessive, meaning the genes that "come together" to make the plant look that way are usually not expressed unless there is a certain "combination" of those genes put together by their parents. Easier explanation, albas are easy to make when self pollinated because recessive genes are expressed more frequently with selfed plants. Same can be said when you cross siblings with each other that both carry a lot of recessive (hidden) traits for the alba expression. The more you self or do sibling crosses (this is called inbreeding), the higher the frequency of recessive traits, such as the alba trait.
The downside to inbreeding is bad mutations: this is why humans who interbreed (eg. mate with cousins, sisters, brothers, parents, or self if that's even possible, etc) are typically more susceptible to disease, mental issues, missing limbs at birth or extra limbs at birth, infertility, asymmetrical faces and body structures, etc. This is because humans have evolved to outcross, or mate with gentically different individuals. The same is true with Sarracenia!
Conversely, when you outcross (for example, take two genetically different leucophylla var. albas parent plants and cross them together), most of the times you get regular looking offspring because the combination of the genes in these crosses tend to hide the alba trait. In other words, a huge number of outcrossed albas results in regular forms of leucophylla.
This is why S. leucophylla var. alba 'Rod's favorite' (the very first outcrossed alba clone to be publicly documented) is significant: both S. leucophylla var. alba MKL42 and S. leucophylla Hurricane creek white clone F (parents of Rod's favorite) express the alba trait, yet combining them together (the resulting seedlings are then considered outcrossed) results in a majority of alba offspring. Why? While I don't know the answer with certainty, the breeding work suggests both parents have likely been either sibling crossed or self pollinated for several generations before they were "born", so the frequency of the hidden alba trait in their genetic makeup is higher than most other clones.
Self pollinating albas will create a high frequency of alba offspring compared to outcrossing, but they will resemble the parents and not necessarily be superior to the parents. If you do find a better looking one than the parents, it's often at the cost of increased disease susceptibility or lower vigor, or both. Outcrossing yields a much lower chance of getting alba offspring (recessive traits get hidden and aren't expressed), but when you find nice albas from such crosses, they tend to be more vigorous, better looking (more symmetrical), whiter, more resistant to diseases if the breeder is selecting for that trait, and overall better performers than either of the parents.
It has taken many generations of selective breeding to come up with exceptional alba clones, such as this one that colors up relatively easily, is super tall (slightly taller than 3' in height), is incredibly vigorous, and is super white:
I hope that's not too complicated to understand, if you need clarification or want to add to your experience to this thread, feel free to post away!