NOID,Genetics and the orchid

[Ray]

Let me take a stab at the original "species versus NOID" angle purely from the average grower's perspective. I think it pertains to the "niche" strategy in orchids.

If I have a plant of a certain species, I can do some research into its native conditions, and make an educated guess as to the cultural requirements I must provide. To some degree, that is even true in primary-, and near-primary crosses.

If I have a NOID however, I am starting with very little cultural info, so must guess. From a practical perspective, such plants tend to be highly complex hybrids of common genera, so a very basic understanding of the needs might suffice, but that's not always the case.

[Possum-Pie]

Originally Posted by Jago

My understanding is that we should know the parentage a bit in case of diploid and tetraploids, so we don't create an infertile hybrid.

When crossbreeding 2 NoIDs, we might get a cross that looks nothing like either plant. Their recessive genes have been unlocked and the result might not be attractive at all. This is something that a home-grower might not care about. However, if you are growing them commercially, you don't want to invest a greenhouse, for multiple years, only to find out your product has no commercial value.

Knowing the parentage of species is way more important than with commercial crosses, as you can think of this hobby as a type of species conservation.
If a species goes extinct in the wild, we might have that still in the hobby. Therefore, we should know if we are breeding a pure species or a cross.

For instance a spider-wasp might not try to sting a Brassia that has abnormal colouring due to selective breeding or crossing with another species/genus.
In the wild Miltonias and Brassias seem to live in the same areas, but they have different vectors for pollinating, so they would never naturally cross.

Example of "genetic polution" would be from tiger conservation. Many zoo tigers are actually crosses, so they can't be used for conservation. They can never be reintroduced to the wild. Wild pure species are becoming increasingly rare, so we should have pure species in zoos, not crosses.
With tigers we are also wasting their breeding energy by breeding ligers and white tigers.
Another example is the bison. Many bison have cow blood in their ancestry.

Thanks for the great observations. I got thinking as I was reading your post about people commercially trying to grow orchids for sale when they haven't seen a bloom yet, and It hit me like a hammer. Duh...Of course the knowing precice genetics are important to people trying to sell orchids...I was not even thinking about that aspect when I first questioned the importance of NOID...Sometimes my brain just reboots for a bit.

I get a bit emotional when discussing genetic modification in animals such as dogs. I don't really think it's fair to artificially modify a dog's genes to have it look "cute". My sister has a German Shepard but the poor thing has severe hip dysplagia. She spends most of her life in pain not by random genetic chance, but b/c somebody wanted to modify her natural breed for some phenotype that they thought was cute.