DNA Testing Question

[Lisa]

Hello All,

Is there anyone on the forum that knows where you send to get testing done on orchids? I know alot of us have a gorgeous orchid and no idea about it's blood lines. When I web search it brings up all kinds of info just not this, it seems. I don't have the foggest how much it would cost either but have a couple of orchids I would love to know about.

Thanks for your thoughts! Lisa

[kiki-do]

No idea, but don't want you to get lost so you to the top.

[Dorothy]

If you have an orchid that is tagged with a name,
the RHS registry site allows you to access
parentage search - Royal Horticultural Society - Plants: The International Orchid Register
and
Grex name search - Royal Horticultural Society - Plants: The International Orchid Register

[Greenorchid]

But if the plant has no name, or it's supposed it's mislabeled?
There's a way to know much more about this plant, through a dna testing? or it's too much expensive?

I'm also interested in this, a lot

[Ray]

Unfortunately, in order to do DNA testing as a way to ID a plant, there would need to be a database of the genetic makeup of all of them, and there simply isn't.

Secondly, even if you were to have a database of the species, there is no guarantee that their ID would tell you what your plant is. For example, if your results showed that there were genes from only three species in your plant's background - A, B, and C - there is no way to know if your plant is (A x B) x C, A x (B x C), or (A x C) x B, which are three different hybrids, or even a more complex hybrid combining them several times over.

[Greenorchid]

Thank you Ray!
But, anyway, does a laboratory specialized in orchid dna tests exist? Just curious

[cirillonb]

DNA testing for humans and animals is extremely expensive (in terms of thousands of dollars.) Remember just within the last 10 years has the human genome (a list of all the chromosome sites on the DNA strand) been defined at the cost of several Billion (that's with a B) dollars.
Furthermore, what Ray said is exactly true. Parentage is not easily determined this way.
Nick Cirillo

[wetfeet101b]

Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, is undertaking a project that catalogs plant DNA samples.

But it is currently for purposes other than orchid hybrid identification.

Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew: Plant DNA Bank database

It may be a long way to go before it can reach a state where a hobbyist can mail in a plant sample and they send you a packet containing the heritage of the plant.
But the process of building the database is already there and it is already opening doors for other botanical and scientific endeavors.

[(..._...)]

awww so I won't be able to find out who my baby's daddy is?

--dna testing would be handy... but I certainly would not want to pay much to find out the parentage of one of my plants. as mentioned earlier, it would be super expensive

[Lisa]

I, personally, would love to be able to find out the "for sure" parentage on a couple of my babies. Would be worth it just to know. Guess I will just have to be patient and wait.