I sowed seeds (in cups) of some crosses recently. Many are sprouting this week. All look good except one particular cross. I sowed 5 seeds of one of my own crosses, Lillian's Woman's Touch x Little Rosy Cloud. So far 3 seeds have sprouted. The issue is that ALL three are albino seedlings.

Is there something about this cross that would cause that? @admmad, any one?

From experience, white seedlings don't survive.

I have already had (if memory serves me) 5 out of 9 turn out to be albinos. The cross was Prairie Blue Eyes X Barbara Mitchell. (or BM X PBE)

petruske said:I have already had (if memory serves me) 5 out of 9 turn out to be albinos. The cross was Prairie Blue Eyes X Barbara Mitchell. (or BM X PBE)

Both 'Prairie Blue Eyes' and 'Barbara Mitchell' are known to carry albino.

Unfortunately, there is no parentage listed for Little Rosy Cloud. Fred Manning would know more about Lillian's Woman's Touch.

@Beckygardener

Your results indicate that both parents carry the same albino mutation. There are many different genes that can mutate to produce non-green leaves. It is not impossible for particular plants to carry two or three different albino mutations. The expected number of green to albino seedlings if both parents carry the same two albino mutations would be 9:7 That would explain your results.
However, the luck of the draw always operates. Under typical circumstances albino seedlings appear when both parents carry the same albino mutation. We then expect that approximately 25% of the seedlings from the cross will be albinos. That holds reasonably well when we produce many seedlings. So if we produce 100 seedlings from the cross we expect that approximately 25 would be albino. However if we produce say only eight seedlings then we would be very lucky if two (the expected number) were albino. The luck of the draw indicates we could get a different number.

Three albinos out of five seedlings when we expect there to be 1 1/4 albino seedlings (only one albino mutation involved) will happen by chance ("the luck of the draw") about one in 10 times. That would suggest that it was just chance. You might want to try the cross again with many more seeds (after all you only need to germinate them to check the leaf colour).

So ...

Here is a photo of the 3 albino seedlings. The other 2 seeds in this same cup never sprouted.:

This photos shows what the seedlings looked like a week ago:


It started dying last week, and then this is what it looked like today:


I planted 5 more seeds of this same cross. We shall what happens!

I yanked some albino seedlings earlier this year and wondered if I should include a note in the database for the two cultivars I used in the cross. Would that type of info be important to anyone else?

Diana - That's a very good question!

I'm not sure it is all that useful. If it were just one gene responsible okay. But apparently there are multiple genes. So a cultivar may just have a problem with other specific cultivars but cross perfectly well with other cultivars.

I have gotten quite a few albino seedlings from some crosses. However, I typically end up with at least one green seedling. I'm more interested in seeing if that seedling is healthy & vigorous. If we find that green seedlings from crosses that produce lots of albino seedlings have lots of negative qualities only then should we start recording problem parents IMHO.

I think it could be quite useful to post which crosses (identifying both parents) produced albino seedlings rather than which cultivars. Posting that a specific cultivar produced albino seedlings without providing the other parent in the cross is not as useful and may be misleading. In most plant species it has been estimated that there are a substantial number of different genes that can mutate to cause albino seedlings (300 different genes able to mutate to cause albino seedlings out of say 25,000 different genes in total). However, typically there are only a few of those mutations that are frequent enough to be present in enough individuals to make an impact in outcrosses. Any mutation, no matter how frequent it is in a population of plants can make an impact when a plant is self-pollinated however.

I had 3 out of 5 albino seedlings from (Elfin Illusion x George Jets ON) X Elfin Reflection, the other two were geen and holding on but not the most vigorous. They were bought seeds so can't try again as an experiment.