Has anyone noticed different traits in flowers (I hybridize daylilies) being either dominate or recessive, like color, eye patterns, season blooming, foliage habit, sculpting, etc.
My son (14) wants to develop a computer program that if you put it your pod and pollen parents, it would give percentages of likely seedlings. Need to find some info to help him.
Debby
Dominate and recessive traits
Debby,
I don't know specifically about daylilies (my hobby is zinnias), but many traits of ornamentals are controlled by more than one gene, so that the trait is not two-state (dominant or recessive), but is multi-state, depending on the dominant or recessive states of a combination of genes.
MM
Iris colors like pink and the plicata series are recessive, but a single gene doesn't control them. For example the series for pink must be present 4 times in the tetraploid to appear. Plant A may carry the gene 3 times & you would not know it as it would appear to be a shade of yellow or white. Crossed to a pink some plants would show the pink color and others would be a different shade. You have to find out by crossing plant A with different others to get the color, as MM says it is a combination. Plicata is a series of equal alleles which show up as plicata markings, luminata (a sort of reverse of the plicata color), glaciata (white or yellow with the absence of markings) or purple (or violet) with no plicata marking at all. Over all the carotine colors are dominant to the anthrocyanin colors. What your son should do is take a specific plant (A) and find out how that one behaves when crossed to a number of differnet plants. Then he can project progeny. Varigated foliage is best obtained when a plant with it is used as a pod parent. These are complicated projects & take a lot of study--if your son has patience he would gain a great deal of hybridizing knowlege but it would take a number of years.
I assume the same can be said for daylilies, maybe he could focus on one trait such as form and see how it turns out.
IRIS COLOR. (in addition to or along with what irisMA (Lucy) has stated)
It has been written that in Tall Bearded irises yellow is the dominant color. That being said, (as well as Pink being recessive).............note: it was a cross between 2 yellow irises that produced the first pink iris.
Iris color pigments can be grouped into 2 separate groups:
1.) ANTHOCYANIDIN Pigments - are water soluble and are responsible for producing the purples, blues, red-violets, crimsons,scarlets, and everything in-between.
2.) CAROTENE Pigments - are oil soluble and are responsible for the yellows. oranges, red-browns, and pinks, and everything in-between. (One of the Carotene pigments is LYCOPENE, and that is where the pink in pink irises came from.)
The resulting color on an iris is not as simple as it may look. It is a combination of "turned on" color genes (and the concentration of those colors), as well as the overlay of those water colors/ and oil colors in the petal layers. The oil and water colors in an iris flower do not mix, and therefore it's been said that iris petals have 2 cell layers/or 2 tissues that appear together which result in the final color(s) and patterns our eyes see that iris as being.
Iris blossoms which exhibit both of the above pigments (phenotypes) can result in a blend of colors, a bi-color, an amoena, or a plicata (of many sorts (broken colors, luminatas, glaciatas, )). Then...................on top of that, you have all the recessive factors and phenotypes that play in as well (which are many).
White (in most cases) is the result of inhibitor factors blocking the Anthocyanin pigment. White can also be a very pale, pale yellow gene (Y3Y3). On occasion, two recessive partial-nonanthocyanin phenotypes will cause the iris flower to APPEAR all white. (it is rare but that is why it is considered recessive.)
When crossing two irises with the same color - - usually "Like will beget like". When one does a wide cross (especially those with unlike patterns and unlike pigments (or phenotypes) ) - then it's next to impossible to predict what the results will be. It is a bit easier to look back AFTER a cross has been made and then examining the results - to determine what may have taken place genetically.
This may or may not help your son with the computer program he is working on, but maybe it will help you see the endless possibilities and why. And this does not even address the color of the beards or the form of the iris flower itself.
~Margie
This message was edited Apr 2, 2008 8:21 PM
Re daylilies: Some have smaller eyes than others. not knowing what traits cause this, I think perhaps forms of the flower example spider versus wider petals would possibly be easier to track. We have several daylily seedlings (done by bees, no imput by us) and one is a spider, others not. Since the seed obviously dropped & we have no idea of the parents, perhaps doing the statistics of form with known parents might be a better start than color. Your son will run into statistics later in life so it might be good practice. I hope that he is not too discouraged. Computers can't do everything, for example stopping my fingers from hitting the a & s keys at the same time.
http://forum.brianmahieu.com/index.php
Ask Brian Mahieu? I would love to know the answer to that...and get a copy of the program if he's willing to share!
one thread (on that site) that he might be interested in is: Genetics of Daylily Colors and H citrina
I'm sure there are more threads, or that the question can just be asked outright, but I'm behind on my reading of that forum :)
This message was edited Apr 16, 2008 8:51 PM
In daylilies, eyes are dominant.
I have also noticed that the trait of cold-morning opening is easily passed onto the seedlings. I am using Ballerina On Ice for this trait, and I had daylily seedlings opening easily when temps when down into the upper 30's last fall.
I'll try to amend this post as I think of more.