What do you think if the problem(s) if a capsule collapse after developing for about

[Mxptrsn]

1 or 2 weeks? I think I did everything correctly but one of my capsules (it's phals) fell off again!!

[Royal]

Seed capsules can fail for any number of reasons. The two plants may be genetically incompatible. Assuming they can be crossed, timing and flower/pollen age can come into play. I try to use newer flowers, but I wait until they have been fully open for a couple of days.

[King_of_orchid_growing:)]

Here's one reason to consider.

If your plant has a bunch of flowers, and you pollinate all the flowers on the plant, supposing that all of them started to set fruit...

I guarantee you that not all the fruit will make it to maturity.

Sometimes the plant will limit the amount of fruit it produces on purpose. That's because it doesn't have the energy to support all of the seed pods. It will most likely abort the pods where the flowers were pollinated the latest.

Here's what I mean:

Suppose your plant has 5 flowers.

Flower 1: pollinated first (forming seed pod 1)

Flower 2: pollinated second (" seed pod 2)

Flower 3: pollinated third (" seed pod 3)

Flower 4: pollinated fourth (" seed pod 4)

Flower 5: pollinated fifth (" seed pod 5)

Should all 5 pollinated flowers start to bear fruit. Assuming the plant can really only fully support 2 pods to maturity - then it's most likely that seed pods 3 through 5 will be the ones the plant aborts.

Remember, this is only one specific reason I'm mentioning. Royal is right, there are actually several different reasons why seed pods will abort.

[Mxptrsn]

Thanks guys for the replies. Appreciate them. =) Ok, to be more specific, here's what i did. First I tried to pollinate 3 flowers (selfing and crossing) and they all failed. Then, I tried 5 flowers after a couple of weeks and soon after they're all fully bloomed. So, at this stage, there're two flowers which successfully formed seed pods (the other three didn't make it), but the first seed pod collapsed after 2 weeks, and the second fell of suddenly in about 3 weeks time after the first seed pod. I did everything correctly; watered it every 4-7 days. But I still can't figure out why it happened. The temperature was about 29 degrees Celcius. I didn't know about the relative humidity. The light was sufficient.

Anyway, what I could think of why it failed might be because the plant is 3n. OR, the possibility could be like what King of orchid said, or they simply didn't match. Is there any other reason why it failed?

[King_of_orchid_growing:)]

Most plants are naturally 2N.

If the plant is 3N or 4N, that's probably the reason why you're having problems.

As Royal had stated, there is a ploidy issue here.

Genetic manipulation is sometimes done on purpose to avoid buyers from breeding their own stock. Some of these plants are patented (not so much on orchids, but on many of the other garden variety plants they are).

Although, there are times when genetic manipulation is not part of such an insidious business venture, but rather for breeding larger more robust plants.

Sometimes if the plant you're pollinating is a hybrid, you will have problems with breeding it. Particularly if you're doing selfings.

If by cross pollinating, you mean two flowers from two different plants that are not clones of each other, then the problem is different.

But if you're pollinating two flowers from two plants, and they're clones of each other, it's almost like selfing. At least this is my understanding.

However...

If you're pollinating two different flowers on the same plant, that's not an outcross, that's still a selfing.