Seed price may amaze

Press, 21 October 1983, Page 19

Seed price may amaze

Incredulity and a little annoyance is often expressed at the cost of some seed especially because justification for the cost is never obvious.

A good example of this sort of thing is represented by certain lines of F.l petunia seed, which may cost as much as $l5 and even more for just one gram. Even though the seed is very fine and therefore goes a long way this can be quite costly on a large scale. There are of course many seed strains of petunias which are considerably cheaper. To obtain the top quality

desired for a special selection of F.l hybrid seed requires considerable exacting work, often prolonged and costly in its endeavour to combine all the desirable characteristics into the new line.

Breeding follows a precise path with the development of new inbred lines, testing and finally evaluation and selection of the best hybrids from the crosses made.

Petunias are bisexual, which means that individual flowers bear both male and female reproductive organs. To produce F.l hybrid seed the pollen-bearing anthers

(male organs of the flower) must be removed from the mother plant to avoid self pollination. The pollen from a particular strain is gathered when ripe by means of a vacuum device which is inserted into the throat of the flower. The pollen is sucked up from the anthers and is then applied to the stigma (female organ) of the selected plant from which the anthers were previously removed. This transference is often done using a pipe cleaner for the purpose. The pollination and fertilisation of a plant in this

manner results in hybrid seed.

Interseeding may continue by the plant breeder, sometimes over many generations, to get true breeds — those which will reproduce their kind.

This will help to explain also why it is that plants raised from seed saved from home-grown F.l plants usually bear little resemblance to the much-admired parent. Generally, unless one is keen enough to follow specialised breeding techniques such as briefly outlined above, it is better to buy named seedlings to avoid disappointments.