Here is hearsay I say and an aside besides....anyway: A man I used to
work for and a lady up the street, both of whom are plant breeders and
who have sold plant patent rights to the likes of Burpee say that
virus in horticulture plants, like Phlox, geraniums and Roses, etc,
are a primary source of new varieties. For instance, they say, an
aphid infestation spreads a virus to a geranium cultivar and the
infection causes some mutation in a stem on this cultivar that the
grower finds interesting, like new colors of variegation in the leaves
or flowers, whatever... The mutated stem is cut and cultured in a
lab. The cells in culture grow so rapidly that they outpace the
virus's ability to infect new cells. The 'clean' cells are then
cloned and a new virus free geranium variety is borne, patented,
marketed and sold by the millions to the public by Burpee and the lady
up the street grows moderately richer and the man I used to work for
propagates thousands of these cuttings on the sly so he doesn't have
to pay royalties to Burpee... This is apparently pretty common in
some areas of the hort industry.

Never know if this kind of stuff is true, but I do find it
interesting.

Al
"Only with time does the alien become the immigrant, the stranger the
neighbor, the outsider the newcomer." Ted Gup

(Aaron Hicks) wrote in message ...
Used to be that people
considered mericlones to be virus-free; while it is generally true that
viruses MAY be eliminated using specific techniques on top of the usual
mericloning process, these techniques are rarely employed due to the
additional expense. It is generally easier to simply test parent plants
for viruses before cloning the bajeezus out of them.