Breeding for cold tolerance?

[Orchidsoutdoors]

Is anyone aware of any breeding done in Phalaenopsis (and more likely intergeneric hybrids) to take the showy blooms of phals on a more cold tolerant plant? I know a couple of hybrids have been made with sarcochilus but nothing serious from what I can see. It would be nice to have showy phals that could be grown outdoors all year round in sub-tropical and temperate climates as the cold-growing phal species are the small, fairly unimpressive ones.

[Ordphien]

I think...
That maybe...
Someone should lol...

I have a few phals that are much more cold tolerant than others.
Not much use for breeding though since they are NOIDS.

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[Rowangreen]

Should be possible, but it may be that breeding in that direction has unexpected results. Most of what I know about genetics is for animals, but may well apply for plants as well. It's basically not as simple as having a gene for something. Actually most gene have several different effects. Few examples... Many white/albino animals are also deaf/have vision problems. That's because the pigment that's lost from the skin is also lost from the ears and eyes. There was a Russian experiment where they bred foxes to be less fearful (so they were easier to handle in fur farms...) for many generations. The foxes also got piebald fur and floppy ears. Wolves in colder climates are bigger than ones in warm climates, because that's an adaption to the cold.

So you could breed for several generations, making conditions colder and selecting the plants that did better. However you might find that the result was you also bred towards the shape and size of cold tolerant species of phal....

Only way to really know is to try it!

[King_of_orchid_growing:)]

I'm not aware of commercial attempts to do such a thing.

If anything, the most noteworthy effort would be from a Phal crossed with a Sedirea.

Most Phals that are tolerant of cooler conditions are able to drop their leaves, that's probably why these crosses don't happen often.

There are also ones that have been crossed with Phal lindenii already, but Phal lindenii is not a true cool grower. It grows intermediate.

Sedirea japonica does grow cool. Not sure about the other Sedirea species.

[Leafmite]

Can't wait until they have ones that take the temps here! More growing room!!!!
Many of those cheap noID phals can actually take temps down to forty ('F), though, probably not for a long time. Before I gave them away, I always left them out as long as temps weren't predicted to drop into the thirties.

[Ordphien]

My cold tolerant NOIDS all sit in 35 - 45 degree weather for at least three months during winter.

Some of them though... heaven forbid it drops below 55...

Can't you breed vandas with phals?
Maybe coerulea would be a good candidate.

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[Andrew]

Orchidsoutdoors,

There was an article in AOR a while back about selecting for cold tolerance in Phals. I'll see if I can dig out the reference tonight but from memory the author used a 'sink or swim' method of exposing the plants to cold while still in the flask and keeping the survivors.

As far as Sarconopsis, they are cold tolerant but I find the flowering rate suffers in a lot of the warm:cool Sarc intergenerics when grown cold. Personally, the Sarconopsis I've seen seem to have lost their "Phal-ness" and look more like oversized Sarcs.

[Orchidsoutdoors]

Andrew,

That would be great if you could find any more information about that article. And you're right about sarconopsis, the ones I've seen have been very close to the sarchochilus side of things. However, it doesn't seem like there's been any attempt to do some serious breeding of that intergeneric, just the odd one here and there purely for the hell of it.

Being in a sub-tropical climate, I have a decent range of orchids I can grow outdoors, and I've been experimenting with some hot species to see how far I can push it. I've got some Angraecum in the garden that survived last winter fine, so it will be interesting to see how they fare as they get bigger. However, I've heard from several growers in Brisbane and the Gold Coast who've tried phalaenopsis outdoors in winter up here and they all died, so I haven't been willing to risk any. I've just deflasked a bunch of mericlone phals that I might try one of as I can afford to lose one or two.

The other advantage of crossing with sarcs I thought would be tolerance of lower humidity. I'd love to have a few phals growing on trees in the garden, it would be spectacular.