NOID,Genetics and the orchid
There has been one observation I've had: Just like dogs, there seems to be an obsession with genetic lineages with orchids. I'm a nurse who also studies genetics. Natural selection keeps a species alive and reproducing by randomly interjecting genetic mutations or recessive traits and allowing the most likely to survive to reproduce.
When humans intervene in dog DNA or orchid DNA to keep a species "pure" (so by definition interbreeding with closer relatives), often times the result is a "pure" lineage, but unexpected undesirable traits from the increase in recessive genes also. This is why there is a universal stigma to having sex with one's sibling. Too many recessive genes pair up and cause undesirable effects. My point is that "pure" lineages don't seem to have any benefit, that even in nature two species separated by a finite distance will cross pollinate. Help me understand this NOID stigma please. |
Is there a stigma other than Judging at orchid shows or trying to sell them without a name?
Even top breeders sometimes will concede that they do not remember, or they lost the tag of one of the parents. I am thinking of Chuck Acker. It is a fascinating idea because in a sense the foundation plants are "mutts." I looked at the breeding of cats, and often the foundation cats are random animals who have the characteristics the breeder desires. Often breeders have a goal, for example, to get a certain color or a certain size. A main goal of breeding for household use is to make orchids able to accept certain temperatures and light exposure. |
I happily buy NoIDs if I see them in bloom and in person, they will have some characteristic or feature that I like. However, a lot of my purchases are online and often of plants that are either not in bloom or haven't bloomed. By buying a named lineage or species then the plant I am buying is likely to have the characteristics or features that are associated with that species or hybrid - understanding that there is always the chance of something random coming up.
If plants that were not flowering were NoIDs then it would be like buying a lableless can at the grocery store - you could end up with dog meat or peaches :biggrin: |
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If there were no advantages to being a pure species (even if the advantage(s) eludes us), then there would not be so many of them. There are a number of different factors which may lend themselves to keeping species "pure" in nature ... distance is only one possible factor. While two species "separated by a finite distance" may cross pollinate -- and there are species between which this is actually not at all uncommon -- there are many species which do not cross pollinate under such conditions. The fact that there are species which have evolved within close proximity to each other indicates that there are advantages to speciation. Furthermore, in a healthy wild population of organisms, there is usually enough genetic diversity amongst the population to prevent an accumulation of deleterious genes. The issue you mentioned is an issue for captive bred populations. Quote:
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I'm not opposed to human manipulation of Orchids, nor am I opposed to keeping a species "pure" by knowing who the parents are. I"m just curious as to why NOID is so important to some folks. |
As an evolutionary biologist I'll nitpick your nitpick a little bit, in a friendly way, if you don't mind :)
Species is a fairly operative term in most subfields of organismic biology, with all those pesky definitions but usually settling around the recognition that out there in the world, there are specific trait/character combinations that populations "nucleate" around, that is, phenotypes bounce around in evolutionary space, but get attracted towards some shared point. And because of humanity's need to classify everything, we generally end up defining that species by all those characters of that (possibly imaginary) "mean" phenotype / genotype. And given the modern synthesis, we like to suppose that there's a reason behind the conservation of those characters. Anyway, this is to say that species identity or lack thereof has nothing to do with "purity" in the clonal sense as you seem to imply - the existence of genetic diversity in a wild, monospecific population doesn't preclude that population from being a "pure" species, in the sense that for botanists, species is defined having a certain set of characters and/or a certain phylogenetic adherence. Clonality is not a requirement for species, not even in bacteria. Don't get me wrong, I'm pretty vehemently opposed to the biological definition of species. I'm also not supporting the term "pure species", since most of us don't really like that as it evokes eugenics imagery. That said, some do like the term "pure species" to differentiate between what happens when two different species overlap spatially, and you need a way to differentiate natural hybrids from the "pure" parent species. Because, every species has at least some degree of admixture, but that's not the point - species is ultimately defining a set of certain traits that tend to correlate with evolutionary cohesiveness, not making statements about who got to swap what genes in ancestral populations. Unless you are, in which case, you talk about hybridization and admixture. OK sorry that got long, and I hope that didn't come across as a jerk-snob. Just my 0.02 to the genetics discussion ;) |
With a lot of the orchids, even the plants with IDs are hybrids but one can trace their lineage back to the wild types / species used to create them. With the NOIDs, there’s no way of knowing. Maybe analogous to a dog with a pedigree versus a mutt?
That said, there are some fantastic mutts out there and I’ve seen some really spectacular NOIDs too. Some I’ve tried to track down to see if I can purchase a similar named plant, never found them, and regretted passing up the NOID. Now, when I see a NOID that really catches my eye, I just buy it. I’m not planning to start propagating my orchids for mass market and although knowing the lineage is nice, the aesthetic appeal is more important (probably why I’ve got over 50 Phals). That said, I would be reluctant to buy a NOID on-line or sight unseen. A named variety carries certain expectations with it, kind of like expected behaviors and proclivities in a pure bred dog. You can look at multiple photos of pedigreed orchids and cross check traits with different sources. These resources are not available for NOIDs and if someone has done something like playing with the color saturation of the photo, you could be in for a surprise. |
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Agreeing that "species" as a term a necessary evil, We can see that in "ring species" a species can geographically move around a natural barrier until they no longer can inter-breed. It may be a M. melodia at one end, and a M. melodia at the other, but the two ends can't breed successfully. I digress. the NOID issue really only bothers me in animal shows. It does rather smack of eugenics, "I'll not let my daughter breed with him, we don't know his parents!!!":( Is the unknown bloom the main reason NOID is so discussed? I understand not purchasing a non-blooming flower if you were looking for a certain trait. ---------- Post added at 07:07 AM ---------- Previous post was at 06:31 AM ---------- Quote:
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Alright stepping down from my soap box now :) |
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. |
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