Pedigree breeding and diversity.

Technique Embryo Culture
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41

That some species-traits were bred in whyle others actually not less desirable were bred out is highly significative.

When one consider:

1_That all those species traits that were bred in are not easy i.e. stable saturated yellow flower.

2_That all those traits that were bred out are not difficult to keep neither to breed in. I.e. hability to grow owroot that all ancestral species share as well as most OGRs.

Then it is obvious:

1_That it was done putting all emphasis on some flower qualities and none to not enough on the plant habilities.

2_That it is genetical empoverishment that actually prevent the lost habilities/qualities easy retreiving without oubreeding.

42

Iā€™m just a beginner, but even I can see that one of the big

problems with seedlings is lack of vigor, including with

disease resistance, growth, and esp. root health (meaning

that I have had a lot of sprouts, but when I compare how

vigorous and totally non-problematic all my other seedlings

(non-rose) are, I have to suspect it is the actual trait of

the seedling that is the problem, and not the soil,

watering, care, etc. HERE IS THE QUESTION: (excuse me if

this sounds conspiratorial) Is this trait actually something

that the corporate growers encouraged, in much the same way

that MONSANTO is now pushing ā€œsuicide geneticsā€ to farmers,

esp. in third world and developing countrys, to the

enrichment of Monsanto, because you have to keep on buying

that seed!, in much the same way as many roses developed in

the 60ā€™s, 70ā€™s and 80ā€™s(and beyond) were not good growers on

their own roots and needed to be grafted or budded on to

sturdier, more vigorous stock. This guaranteed that most

people did not root their own from the neighbors great new

roseā€“after all they could not count on a roseā€™s ability to

thrive on itā€™s own root, and how many of us were willing to

graft that newest winner? And I know of patent protections

etc., but judging from the different rose forums, that sure

is not a consideration for many people. Or am I just

finding that many of my seedlings (I know when a weed comes

up because it has no problem developing secondary leaves

and growing two inches in 24 hrs) are just not getting

the(secret formula)specialized care that rose seedlings

need? I do have some that are thriving, but I find it is

really a small percentage of what sprouts. That takes a bit

of the fun out of growing, which I think, judging from this

above conversation, is about restoring that hybrid vigor,

and natural selection vigor of the species.

Jackie

1 Like
43

one of the big problems with seedlings is lack of vigor, including with disease resistance, growth, and esp. root health Is this trait actually something that the corporate growers encouragedā€¦

No. As Pierre has said, it is really a side effect of emphasizing flower qualitites combined with consanguinity.

Actually, the use of bud propagation divided hybridization effort into two wholely separate breeding efforts - one for the upper parts of the plant and the other for rootstocks. Nor is this a bad thing, because it allows for a desirable cultivar to be marketed and grown in places it otherwise never could be. The downside is that bud propagation makes it easy to ignore selecting the upper parts of the plant for standalone vigor.

It is interesting to see what goes into assessing the lower portion of the plant. Mike Fitts sent me an article by Grif Buck about the Iowa State efforts at breeding rootstocks. It lists several selection criteria for rootstocks. These include what you might expect: foliar disease resistance; resistance to soil born pests; ease of propagation; lack of suckering; long, straight, thornless canes (the better to bud with); high productivity (whatever this means); and compatability with scion stocks. But the most important improvements they were seeking were root hardiness and root flexibility (to facilitate packaging).

This is an awful lot to ask of plant, and much easier to get if you donā€™t also have to worry about whether it is remontant; a climber, pillar, floribunda, HT, or large bush; or what color, shape, size and smell the bloom has.

Another big part of the problem is related to commercial considerations as well. Itā€™s no coincidence that winter hardiness went out the window during the first part of the twentieth century. Thatā€™s when the rose industry in the USA moved to Mediterranian climates. Jackson and Perkins closed up their Zone 6a nursery in Newark, NY and moved to sunny California. While the French got started in Parisian suburbs, today Meilland (for instance) grows its roses in Spain, Morocco, the Netherlands and California, and they eventually took over the only major US grower who stubbornly stayed in a temperate zone, Conard-Pyle. Breeders with the edge on hardiness today are the ones who still breed their roses in cold climates like Kordes (northern Germany) and Poulsen (Denmark).

So no sinister corporate agenda led to the problems, the industry simply evolved that way due to commercial pressures.

44

Jackie,

most of the species grow up to a minimum of 200cm height.

They put their power into small single blooms once a year.

Modern cultivars e.g. floribunda roses are on the opposite side with most of their properties.

Have look on a floribunda seedling, 10cm high, with 4 or more double blooms - a few weeks after germinating.

No wonder that this disposition for dwarf growth and high performance blooming will not work on the tiny seedling roots without drawbacks on infection load capacity.

Ren

45

That grafting was and is still considered as contributing to patent protection is a fact. I know many leading rose breeders that did not like the idea of going back to ownroots. It is a lot easier to have an eye on the specialized rose grafting nurseries than having to look at every nursery and horticulturist.

Grafting generalization allowed growing vars that are weak ownroot and combined with chemicals use contributed to lowered plant habilities standards. Reduced strength and resistance no longer were failures. Then not enough spraying and caring were faults.

These lowered plant habilities standards allowed more consanguinity along with flower sophistication.

With genetical drift the non selected for habilities vanish in a few generations. No bad purpose needed here.

Genetical drift is what is observed over time for smaller isolated populations. Without change in adaptations one can observe that each one

46

Rene

(Sorry I donā€™t know how to make an accent aigu on this forum) I think you may have a point.

I have another question ā€“ has anyone had a seedling that showed great disease resistance but very little vigor. I know of some roses that grow with great vigor but are not particularly resistant, but I know of no roses that are resistant but are puny growers ā€“ but then I donā€™t know much. Does anyone out there have any observations.

Bob in New Orleans

47

First of all, thanks everyone for an absolutely fascinating discussion. Brings to mind something Iā€™ve noted in my seedlingsā€¦

My breeding program (such that it isā€¦ I finally have my first registered, Officially Named rose (end of gloat)) is based on the found rose ā€œFaā€™s Marbled Moss.ā€ This rose grows, quite unattended, in an old irrigation ditch. Itā€™s been there for at least 14 years and the neighborhood old-timers tell me there have been roses in that spot for at least 30 years. It gets water only when the ditch is used to relieve flash flooding in the mountains, and when it rainsā€¦ which is just about never anymore. I canā€™t say itā€™s exactly happy where it is, but itā€™s survived winter, drought, no fertilizer to speak of, choking grass etc for so long that one might almost consider it a ā€œferal rose.ā€

Whether in the ditch where it gets no care, or in the garden where I spoil it, FMM sets hips with enthusiasm and has turned out to be a splendid pollen parent as well. But the coolest thing about FMM is that you can get nine or ten self-pollinated seedlings from one hip and, although alas theyā€™ll all be pink, theyā€™ll all be quite different in character. And theyā€™ll (almost) all grow like weeds.

Last year for no particular reason, I gathered some open-pollinated seeds from Golden Celebration, the only English rose thatā€™s ever seemed to be able to tolerate the climate. I got one very nice seedling which I would like to introduce, but the plant is so TINY that Iā€™ve only felt able to take one cutting from it. Iā€™m constantly pinching buds off itā€“itā€™s almost as if the only genes the poor little thing has are for ā€œMake Flowers!ā€

I let it bloom for a while when FMM was blooming, and since FMM seems to be happy with pollen from anything, I collected pollen from ā€œMaman Ichikoā€ and tried to make a cross. Maybe Ichiko is too young to have viable pollen, but none of the crosses took. Didnā€™t want to do a reciprocal cross this year because the plant is just soā€¦ tiny! Itā€™s beautiful, it has a fragrance to die for, and as floriferous as can be; but I donā€™t know if Iā€™ll ever be able to do anything with it, unless I can somehow get it to grow upā€¦

All in all, it makes me think that maybe a good way to introduce diversity back into some old lines is to seek out Found Roses. Maybe it would be a good idea to work toward putting color and such into the vigorous foundlings, rather than trying to put the much more scattered and ethereal properties of vigor into a rose which has color, form and fragrance but needs continual coddling.

48

Reintroducing lost features from OGRs is something Austin does as well as many others.

We can look at their achievements. Focusing on perfume Austin got it but concerning desease resistance after a lot of different attempts he as well as others failed to the point Austin considered and is using some mostly untaped diploid species hybrids tetraploidizing them.

Lost qualities of modern roses are mainly to ascribe to Bennett. As the first english rose breeder he introduced greenhouse breeding that from a necessary expedient in a northern and wet climate soon became a must and actually is generalized. He introduced also pedigree roses another improvement that had the results we know.

These two novelties led to selection for flower novelty and blue blood.

Roses buyers then were rich people with gardeners that rivaled at growing and collecting the most rare novelties and praised highly the more difficult beauties.

A trend that is not really revised. Years ago as I was new to a rose forum and said I was breeding for no spray roses I was fired by a show roses grower as not loving our favorite flower.

49

Before Bennett rose breeders were supposed to sow OP seeds and to grow and appraise seedlings in nursery fields or gardens.

That is not restricting parent diversity and globally in natural environment valuating seedlings. They had to grow nice in the originator

50

Poor genetical diversity is not a rose problem only. There are a lot of domesticated plants that owing to inconscious breeding bias were led to this. Particularly with oubreeding plants as are roses sp. Allways with the same consequences: reduced breeding efficience, and higher cultural and climatic standards for success from lower strength and desease liability.

Elsewhere I said it is unconventional thinking because I have never heard of it applied to roses when it is basic knowledge. Elementary genetics.

Most OGRs are more adaptable than are modern roses.

Reduced breeding efficience is a symptom roses express to the highest degree. Real and reliable improvements are rare and at cost of an excessive amount of work and number of seedlings. Unmatched to my knowledge.

Only answer is to promote genetical diversity.

How to achieve this avoiding past failures? I do not remember where I did read that an answer is breeding with low selection pressure a complementary synthetic population. Low selection pressure is anything such as OP or mixed pollens from a rather large parental sample. Complementary means here able of providing or letting express desirable features with genetical diversity that will be found i.e. using species that are different from the ancestral ones.

Not unlike the strategy Don consider when he says:

51

A question for the fun of itā€¦

Why is it that modern roses are so easy to grow, do not need to be sprayed, require no winter protection, and have very few diseases?

ā€¦that is, in California.

A funny question, because perhaps modern roses were meant to grow in a very restricted range???!

Jim Sproul

52

These are good questions, Jim.

perhaps modern roses were meant to grow in a very restricted range?

A great many were bred in California, so they were selected for this climate no matter what other considerations went into thier breederā€™s decision making process.

Why is it that modern roses are so easy to grow, do not need to be sprayed, require no winter protection, and have very few diseasesā€¦ that is, in California?

I think a big factor in the prevalance of disease has to do with the prevailing winds. Winds over the west coast have been cleansed by thier passage over the vast Pacific Ocean. The farther east you go the greater the amount of entrained disease spores picked up as the winds move over land. Likewise, the Gulf states have wind patterns that pick up spores from Mexico and Central America.

53

Itā€™s pollutionā€¦ Iā€™ve heard this said often.

The dirtier the air is, the less likely a rose will have BS. This has to do with sulfur in the air, I think.

A lot of clean roses arenā€™t really clean if you move them where the air is especially clean. Soā€¦ if a person wants to select for high resistance, he or she should live in a place high in the mountains. (The Alpinesā€¦ maybe? R. pendulina, I heard, is the only BS free roseā€¦)

54

Sorry Enrique. If that were the case there would be a lot of locales in South Louisiana and eastern TX which would be rose-heaven. I donā€™t tend to see spectacular rose gardens in the shadows of our petroleum-related industries. On the contraryā€¦

Humidity, rainfall, sunlight, humidity, soil conditions and wind can all contribute to disease. And sulfur is over-rated as medicine for roses.

Mediterranean climates, I would imagine, are the best for roses. Ergo Californians reporting some nasty plague-bearers as ā€œdisease-freeā€.

Darned Californiansā€¦

:wink:

55

Florist roses show how features that are not prioritary at selection dwindle. Not so long ago the roses greenhouse grown for cut flower were the same as those in gardens. For a dozen generation specialized breeding was done for florists. The result is self speaking: actually most are too desease prone to be garden grown. Even with favorable climate.

There are easy for roses climates where the sophisticated modern roses are at theyr best. Maritine ones like England, Brittany, Loire valley, Paris. As well as colder ones. Mountain areas have wonderfull roses there as winter kills bugs and spores. Also houses are scattered there. Here french Riviera some spring weeks are like heaven: all nice new clean foliage without funghus deseases. But this do not last long.

The same for the priviledged for roses places. A week long rainy spell and heaven is gone.

That at times and at some places (not the same for all!) modern roses are so beautiful is hard working for generations breeders wonderful achievement. Downside is the steed greater cost paid for this. In spite of all efforts and studies done rose breeding is remarkably non efficient. I.e.: unable to breed an universally desease resistant scented rose that Friesia is not at all for us southerners. Someting that for ever all hybridizers are breeding for.

This said, we know that were we in in a priviledged for roses place our feelings and thoughts would be quite else. As well that northern breeders are not much concerned as genetical diversifying is nothing new for them while they are protected from mainstream HTs abuse.

Beware Jim: you should better consider them as soon you could be concernedā€¦ global warming helping ā€¦smileā€¦

56

Thanks for the good humor!

Though the question was tongue in cheek, the ease of growing roses in much of California might argue that perhaps roses really should be bred regionally. Maybe it is unreasonable to expect that any rose should have widespread utility???

That sort of expectation might be like breeding for northern citrus varieties that could withstand 40 degrees below zero, or for tropical plumeria growing in NY City.

Jim Sproul

57

This is a great topicā€¦

Okā€¦ a few points to throw into the fray. I agree with going back to species roses to introduce more hybrid vigour into modern roses butā€¦

If, as has been said, roses in general have a rather shallow gene pool then the issue of disclosing the pedigree of roses used in breeding programs, such as those conducted by Kordes, should not be an issue. If most roses share a limited gene pool then shouldnā€™t similar results be expected using most varieties? From what Iā€™ve read on here about the techniques used by Kordes in their breeding programs it looks like classic survival of the fittest and economies of scale (i.e. you do the same thing often enough you are bound to hit upon someting that works). When Iā€™m teaching the concept of variability to my high school science classes I say if the haploid number for humans is 23 and each of them segregate randomly during meiosis then that means there are roughly 8 million possible combinations you can achieve from the genes of a single individual and when you combine the probabilities of 1 in 8 million during the process of fertilisation then the chances of one married couple producing genetically identical offspring is something in the order of 1 in 64 trillion. And that is from just two people and that is also not taking into account polyloidy as we have in roses. If the genetic diversity of roses is as limited as has been said but Kordes is achieving success using survival of fittest tactics, and we all understand that genes of various dominance and inheritence can remain hidden for long periods of time, does that not mean that these genes could be brought out of any (most) varieties by repeating the same cross many many times? Is it also possible that resistane is due not to the pressence, or lack there-of, of certain individual genes but is instead due to a magic combination of the genes that are present? If Kordes is achieving success in the disease resistance stakes by leaving the seedlings to their own devices and chosing the ā€˜last man standingā€™ maybe, through the magic of random assortment and segregation, they have just hit upon a successful combination (and there may be more than one - always more than one way to skin a cat - so they say), and by choosing these to breed from they are concentrating the gene pool with respect to disease resistance?

I donā€™t think it is particularly useful to compare the processes of breeding garden roses to those employed by mother nature, unless it is our goal to produce lines of true breeding roses. Trueā€¦ mother nature works with populations but the end result is a species not a cultivar. The whole idea of breeding roses is to isolate the various phenotypic and genotypic variations. Maybe a better way of looking at all the modern roses we do have is that they are a graphic representation of the amazing diversity that is possible by just shuffling the genes that we do have.

58

Well said Simon. I think the points you make are valid.

Bringing new species into the mix might help strengthen disease resistance or at least provide sources for new genetic traits but by in large breeding roses is still a numbers game.

Those with the capability to produce the largest number of seedlings will always have an advantage.

59

Robert,

Bringing new species into the mix might help strengthen disease resistance or at least provide sources for new genetic traits

Looking at your own hybrids it appears that you must feel these are no small things, though. Banksia, bracteata, californica, spinosissima, clinophyla, rubignosa, canina, giganteaā€¦ did I miss any?

by in large breeding roses is still a numbers game. Those with the capability to produce the largest number of seedlings will always have an advantage.

The numbers are up by two orders of magnitude from what they were in the mid-twentieth century. In those days ten or twenty thousand seedlings per year was plenty to keep up. Today it requires close to a million. The trouble in doing this with a fixed gene pool is that it creates a situation of diminishing returns. This, in turn, sets the stage for an upstart to come along and change the rules or even start an entirely new game altogether.

There is a practical limit, too, to the numbers any breeder, institutional or otherwise, can evaluate effectively. It is this more than anything that allows the smaller players to stay in the game. Numbers or not, it is still a game of strategy.

60

The quote ā€œToday it requires close to a million.ā€ may be accurate for roses that are competitive in diverse (i.e. many) climates; but I feel that a much smaller number is sufficient if one is simply interested in roses suitable for a specific climate.

My example of this is the Canadian Explorer program. I do not remember the typical number of seedlings that they evaluated yearly, but I do remember that it was not a large number.