Crossbreeding Plants?
 

Hello,

I'm a complete lay-person, so please forgive me if the answer to my question
is obvious. If I have two very different species of plants and they are
both diploids with the same number of chromosomes, will I be able to
crossbreed them, or are there other determining factors?

Thanks

In article , none writes
Hello,

I'm a complete lay-person, so please forgive me if the answer to my question
is obvious. If I have two very different species of plants and they are
both diploids with the same number of chromosomes, will I be able to
crossbreed them, or are there other determining factors?

Thanks

No.

To deviate slightly, you can often cross related diploids and
tetraploids - the offspring, which are triploids, are sterile (or
apomictic), but are otherwise viable. Also, what matters is not so much
the number of chromosomes, but the number of chromosome arms. (There's
several cases of species with varying numbers of chromosomes, tho' I
don't recall such a plant species.)

There's lots of other determining factors, which run from ecological
isolation to hybrid inviability. By manually crossing plants to bypass
some of the earlier ones, but I'd expect that most wide crosses would
fail due to the pollen grains of the pollen parent failing to grow in
the styles of the seed parent. If you get past that then perhaps the
sperm can't penetrate the egg. And if it does perhaps the resulting
embryo doesn't produce the right signals to cause seed maturation. And
so on.
--
Stewart Robert Hinsley

As you say, there are many barriers to interfertility. Plants having the
same chromosome number is no guarantee that they will be interfertile.

Sometimes wide, even intergeneric, crosses are possible with a third species
are possible when two presumed closely related species will not hybridize.

Sometimes the diploids are not interfertile while the polyploids are.

Sometimes a cross one way will be fertile when the reciprocal cross
repeatedly fails.

There are no guarantees. All you can to is try reciprocal crosses and see
what happens.

There was one cross that I had tried 20 times before I was able to get
fertile seed.


"Stewart Robert Hinsley" wrote in message
...
In article , none writes
Hello,

I'm a complete lay-person, so please forgive me if the answer to my
question
is obvious. If I have two very different species of plants and they are
both diploids with the same number of chromosomes, will I be able to
crossbreed them, or are there other determining factors?

Thanks

No.

To deviate slightly, you can often cross related diploids and
tetraploids - the offspring, which are triploids, are sterile (or
apomictic), but are otherwise viable. Also, what matters is not so much
the number of chromosomes, but the number of chromosome arms. (There's
several cases of species with varying numbers of chromosomes, tho' I
don't recall such a plant species.)

There's lots of other determining factors, which run from ecological
isolation to hybrid inviability. By manually crossing plants to bypass
some of the earlier ones, but I'd expect that most wide crosses would
fail due to the pollen grains of the pollen parent failing to grow in
the styles of the seed parent. If you get past that then perhaps the
sperm can't penetrate the egg. And if it does perhaps the resulting
embryo doesn't produce the right signals to cause seed maturation. And
so on.
--
Stewart Robert Hinsley

"Peter Jason" wrote in
:

Any way if Cereus.Invalidus.Magnus.Est can produce a new species
(as he says) then surely nature would have no trouble.


I can produce an undescribed species. I took this picture of this
suspected Schizaea a couple of years ago. It was a bit out of the range
of other members of the genus.

http://members.aol.com/grommit383/malpais/malpais7.html

Sean

Never said I produced a new species but I might have!!!

Hybridizing is only the first step.


"Sean Houtman" wrote in message
.. .
"Peter Jason" wrote in
:

Any way if Cereus.Invalidus.Magnus.Est can produce a new species
(as he says) then surely nature would have no trouble.


I can produce an undescribed species. I took this picture of this
suspected Schizaea a couple of years ago. It was a bit out of the range
of other members of the genus.

http://members.aol.com/grommit383/malpais/malpais7.html

Sean

Finding a new species isn't as difficult as many believe, especially when
you go looking somewhere nobody has been before!!!!


"Sean Houtman" wrote in message
.. .
"Peter Jason" wrote in
:

Any way if Cereus.Invalidus.Magnus.Est can produce a new species
(as he says) then surely nature would have no trouble.


I can produce an undescribed species. I took this picture of this
suspected Schizaea a couple of years ago. It was a bit out of the range
of other members of the genus.

http://members.aol.com/grommit383/malpais/malpais7.html

Sean

"Sean Houtman" wrote in
message .. .
"Peter Jason" wrote in
:

Any way if Cereus.Invalidus.Magnus.Est can produce a new species
(as he says) then surely nature would have no trouble.


I can produce an undescribed species. I took this picture of this
suspected Schizaea a couple of years ago. It was a bit out of the range
of other members of the genus.

http://members.aol.com/grommit383/malpais/malpais7.html

Sorry, but I think this may well be _Asplenium septentrionale_, and
not a _Schizaea_.

Admittedly, it's one of the weirder-looking species of spleenwort...

http://www.efloras.org/florataxon.as...n_id=200004170
http://www.google.com/images?as_q=as...septentrionale

cheers