Interesting Hybridizing Information

Was reading this thread on the Caudiciforms Forum, and wondered how it might apply to Bearded Iris. I'm a novice hybridizer, and have not ventured into the chromosomes aspect, (probably never will) but know some of you are quite knowledgeable in this area... irisMA. What do you make of this. Notice this fellow is from Australia... any chance some of those big old Blyth beauties, Decadence comes tro mind, may have extra chromosomes? I may be way off base here, but it is interesting. Seems a very hazardous chemical to use, if you could find out what it was. Not likely something I would try.

http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/909786/

Dan

The link doesn't seem to work... here it is again.

http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/909786/

Well, either my pc is not working right, or I'm not adding the link properly. If interested, and the link isn't working for you, go to the Caudiciform Forum, and checkout the thread. "An experiment that worked.!"

Sorry for the inconvenience.

I'm already hogging this thread, and see it is time I go to bed. The link is working... my mind was not. :)

This message was edited Oct 20, 2008 11:53 PM

The drug is probably colchicine. That has been used to introduce tetraploidy to beardless irises since the early 60s. I think Currier McEwen first did it with siberians.

Colchcine is a drug used to treat gout, and is very toxic. How on earth did someone come up with using a drug to treat gout on plants, boggles the mind.

To produce a tetraploid plant from a diploid, colchcine is applied to a terminal bud or branch and if it takes all the cells in the developing branch will be tetraploid. Works on most plants.

I don't know why SpeciesNut would not have named it, if it is colchicine he's talking about. Even though it is higly toxic, it's been used for years for this purpose, and it's quite well known that's what it's used for.

I agree with pollyk, probably colchcine. TBs are all ready 48c tets. No need to 'treat' them. Dr. McEwen was a specialist is arthitis so knew the drug from there. Tets give many more versions of color than the diploid colors, pink for instance. Barry Blyth, Keith Keppel & Paul Black gave a program on new TB colors at the Austin Convention, a good many of the reverse amoenas, so the color are there. Your seedlings seem to have fantastic colors, obviously from the parents you choose, so really no need to 'treat' anything. I am not a scientist but know the bearded iris ch. counts.

Now in siberians the newer colors are showing up in the diploids. The colors were obviously there, they just had to be found. When Currier first saw the Schafer/Sacks irises he was dumfounded. His reaction was "we didn't change enough plants". Not enough colors were brought into the tets. Some sort of weed killer is also being used to change those. I don't know what it is.

Thanks pollyk and irisMA... I knew someone would know about this. I appreciate the info.

Dan.

I still can't get over, how, in his brilliant mind, Dr. McEwen came up with trying colchicine, a gout medicine, on plants.

I haven't heard of the weed killer, IrisMA. Interesting.

An irisarian working in a lab in MS has mentioned it. Also people in Maine had a weed killer accident & the plant most affected turned up tet. I don't know what they were using, but everyone involved thinks it a great joke.

In reading the article . Colchicine is a substance found in a plant that is used used for gouty arthritis and the laboratory to arrest cells during cell division, so there chromosomes can be visualized.

It is an alkaloid prepared from dried corns and seeds of colchicine, this is one of the top ten deadliest plants on the earth, there is no antidote for it's poison, a pretty plant but very , very deadly .

Colchicine is used in plant breeding to produce larger and better plants using polyphoids to overcome the sterility of a hybrid species during plant breeding. Inital hybrid is sterile and they have sought after characteristics, after polploidization hybrids became fertile and can be further propagated.

Colchicine used to introduce polyploidy is in cream form.

It origionally was derived from COLCHICUM--autumn blooming crocus, which many of us have.

It is apparently very toxic, however, as far as I know it's never been a secret that it was used to introduce polyploidy.

So it may be SpeciesNut is not naming it as it is the weed killer IrisMA is talking about.

I bet they wouldn't think it was suce a joke, IrisMA, if they had a little change in their chromosomes. Not something to mess with outside the lab in very controlled conditions.