Does anyone have access or any info, books, papers, etc. regarding how a dramatic increase in ploidy of a genus can affect it? A pointer in the right direction to any resources would be helpful.
Danke, thx and ta in advance 
I’m not sure what you are looking for other than what can be found by a google search. So maybe this is redundant. But anyway here’s some suggestions. First G.Ledyard Stebbins is the grandfather of the field. So things that cite him may be useful.
second, if you go to http://www.sciencemag.org/content/320/5875/481.short you should find an article cited by quite a few others. Several of them are interesting. The Science article “Genomic plasticity and the diversity of polyploid plants” is from, vol 320, 2008 which means all the citing articles are recent ones. Polyploids are very common, more than 1/3 of species are recognizable as polyploid, but not necessarily recent. Grape vines for instance represent three very ancient genomes blended. Probably so do diploid roses.
Something to keep in mind is that “Small RNAs serve as a genetic buffer against genomic shock in Arabidopsis interspecific hybrids and allopolyploids.” found in Oct 2009 PNASUS. Plant have ways to cope.
A neat very recent paper that might help is by Pradham et al in Euphytica 176:87-98 (2010) “Successful induction of trigenomic hexaploid brassica from a triploid hybrid of B napus L. and B. nigra (L.) Koch.” Those are napa cabbage, which is a cross of rapa (Chinese cabbage) and oleracea (common cabbage) and nigra which is wild black mustard.
An older paper I want to read is “Rapid genome change in synthetic polyploids of brassica and its implications for polyploid evolution” from 1995 PNASUS 92:7719-7723.
Finally, I ran across what seems to be a student paper by Kaarthik John on “Polyploidy in plants” seemingly from a genetics course in 2004 at wvu.edu - a decent short review that was first response to my search.
Hope this can get you started.
Is there a reliable way of doubling chromosomes of rose embryos, other than using nasty chemicals?
I am about to receive some interesting SE Asian species seed, and wouldn’t mind dabbling with chromosome doubling, if all it requires is sticking the extracted embryos in the fridge for a day or two (at the right moment of development).
Than you , Larry. It gives me starting points instead of randomly searching and ending up lord knows where. My primary goal is to create an everbloomer with a habit like Rosa moyesii, which in the PNW, is like a Common Lilac, lol. You can make a small tree from both, which I find highly useful. But how does one retain that massive trunk structure without being a climber? And how does the ploidy come in to play? Also, is it possible to have an everblooming octoploid? Is the red peonin in Rosa moyesii heightened by its odd ploidy? And why are some of the circumpolar roses higher in ploidy count. What purpose did this serve? I have a huge chain of questions like this that I will not waste anyones time with right now until I can see more.
Has anyone ever doubled triploid and tetraploid roses successfully?
It would be interesting to see if a method like this would work for roses as well…
"Seedlings from each cross were germinated in five separate pots with approximately 100 seeds per pot. When seedlings were at the cotyledon stage, all of the plants (subsamples) in an individual pot were either treated with 1, 2, 3, or 4 applications of oryzalin separated by 4-day intervals or left untreated (control). The preemergent herbicide Surflan�A.S. (40.4% oryzalin) was diluted to produce a suspension containing 50pM oryzalin with 5.5g/L agar at 50