Understanding Hybrids

However, inbreeding has its drawbacks, too. In order to survive, these inbred plants may have sacrificed flower size for disease resistance, for example.

Welcoming the Hybrids
The reason for creating hybrids is to overcome short comings of nature. Breeders will search out traits which they consider beneficial, typically from two different plants within the same species, and then try to breed a new plant which retains the beneficial traits of both parents.

Note that a hybrid does not have to be created by man. Bees are some of the best hybridizers we have. Planting two different plants of the same species next to each other in a yard will almost surely create hybrid offspring (termed "standards") without any interaction by the growers.

By controlling the pollination process, however, hybridizers will ensure that the offspring will have genetic characteristics from exactly the two parents selected, and be able to cross plants which would otherwise bloom at different times in nature, or which had delayed maturity of the pollen. The two parent plants may each have very desirable traits that the grower wants to combine, such as flower size from one plant with vigor of the second plant.

Seed Parents and F1 Offspring
When two different plants with at least one different trait are hybridized, the offspring is called "F1 hybrids" which is short for "first filial generation plants"; the first generation offspring from the parent plants.

Just because a plant is a hybrid does not guarantee it will be particularly good, however. Some are, but some are not. During the hybridizing process, the best results are harvested and the remaining culled (discarded). At a certain time a new cultivar is developed with which the hybridizer is satisfied. Cultivar is short for "Cultivated Variety" and simply means that a specific plant has been created with a set of desirable, unique traits.

Hybrid Vigor
Often these F1 hybrids tend to be more vigorous than both of their parents and the term "Hybrid Vigor" is used to describe this advantage. A plant which is said to have excellent hybrid vigor will thus exhibit better flowering, higher disease resistance, etc. This is a case where 1 + 1 adds up to more than 2. One reason is naturally that only plants exhibiting the best traits have been purposely selected, the deck has been stacked, but in general it has also been experienced that inbred organisms appear to improve when new genetic material is introduced

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