Can selfing result in identical offspring?

[My Green Pets]

My genetics knowledge is rusty at best, but I was wondering what type of variation one can expect from the selfing of a hybrid Vanda. Would any offspring be identical to the parent?

Thanks for your input!

[MrHappyRotter]

It would be contingent on how you define identical, and very much on the cross.

Nothing other than a division or clone is going to be genetically identical. Even if you have genetically identical clones, there can be noticeable differences in the flowers between the plants, because growing conditions and overall health can make a difference in shape, size, color, patterns, etc.

When you take a selfing on a hybrid, you have to assume you're going to get a hodgepodge of traits. Maybe if a plant's parentage is dominated by one or two similar looking species, a selfing could produce lots of offspring that look similar to the parent. Similarly, if a hybrid is really complex, with lots of genes mixed in, you might expect some number of offspring to look similar. But primary hybrids, and novelty-types ... you would expect a lot of variation in the offspring, with few, if any, turning out identical to the parent.

[My Green Pets]

Thank you for taking the time to type out your awesome reply! I selfed a Vanda today, let the journey begin!

[NYCorchidman]

I agree with above.
Even with a "pure" speices, selfing never produce identical plants, although speices and primay hybrids will produce offsprings with much less variability.

The more complex the hybrids, the higher the variabilities would be when you self a given hybrid.
The chance of having an offspring that would look almost identical in appearance even would be quite low. plus, you would have to grow out all the offspring to see the result and find them if you are lucky. With that said, your blue vanda (I assume that's what is being talked about in your question) would produce many that are lookalike, so that is a great news.
Growing them all up to flowering size would take up a lot of space, especially for things like vanda.

Btw, have you selfed your large blue vanda?
Nothing against what you wish to do, but with so many nice blue vanda hybrids readily available, why would you do this? just curious.

[lepetitmartien]

The only way to have really identical offspring is to self plants over multiple generations. Then you have a "pure" offspring, that is exactly the one you want, and also it's certainly weak and prone to issues as you've impoverished its genetics, and also reinforced any genetic issue it may have.

On a typical selfing of a species, you'll have variations still, as you'll have an offspring along these lines:

The DNA is stored in 2N form so the parent is AB (each chromosom is at least a little different, so there's one we call A, and one B).

Each ovocyte and pollen will bring (it's more complicated than this, I'm simplifying) just one of these DNA so you'll have ovocytes A, ovocytes B, pollen A and pollen B.

When they fuse you can have :
AA
AB
BA=AB
BB
so the more diverse the genetics of your plants are, the more diverse the offspring will be, as you have 3 mix possibilities. Only 1/4 will be of the AA "type", 1/4 of the BB "type", and 1/2 of the "AB" type.

Plus there may be recombinations along the line, small mutations, environmental induced expressions that can add to plant diversity.

As a simple rule, if possible, selfing should be avoided, as you impoverish the genetics and weaken the offspring. That's why some selections are so fragile. When you work on a small quantity of plants and you select among them, you may find your ideal but it'll be weak.

On the other side, usually, when you make a cross between 2 species, the offspring is stronger because the genetics are way more diverse.

[artem]

Producing doubled haploids can be useful if you want to obtain stable offsprings of a plant hybrid. They would be geneticly stable, but they wouldn't be identical to the parent. They'd rather be similar to the parent. I don't know how to make double haploids of any orchids, but in general and most often in order to make them pollen is taken (it has a single set of chromosomes, which means haploid), then this pollen has to be sown on certain media, then seedlings, which originally were haploid, can spontaneously double their own set of chromosomes which means they become diploids as like normal plants. Often in order to double a set of chromosomes special substances are used. This methods are often quite difficalt and performed in labs. You can read about doubled haploid production a lot in internet. Sorry for my english.