Standardizing Research Clones in Ornamental Horticulture

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Plants are research tools and we should standardize our plants, including those used for in vitro propagation studies, as carefully as we standardize our statistical methodology and instrumentation. A paramount assumption in research is that experiments can be reproduced. When this principle is violated inadvertently (e.g., by researchers using different genetic material), we may have results that are nonreproducible or, at least, difficult to compare. Further effort may be wasted as researchers attempt to reconcile and interpret conflicting results. This is not a firm foundation on which to build the subdiscipline of floriculture/ornamental/environmental horticulture (FOEH). One could say that this is stating the obvious and suggesting that we reinvent the wheel. No claim is made that using known genetic material in research is original, merely that FOEH researchers often do not. One of the many reasons molecular biology research has rapidly moved forward is that isolates (clones) are widely shared by researchers in that field. Similarly, research on growth chamber uniformity has long been facilitated by floriculturists using the same cultivar. Research ornamental horticulturists and floriculturists struggle with many minorul crops, and our problems are further confounded by use of undefined clones, particularly of woody ornamental and foliage species. In some’ cases, this problem cannot be avoided, but through cooperation it may be. Using whatever clone is at hand is fine– when one’s paper is the first on a species; however, as more information accumulates, research advantages are gained by using a standardized clone (Kester, 1983) as a research model. In Texas, we have seen striking differences among the response of Coleus clones to salinity, Peperomia obtusifolia genotypes to low-light stress, and clones of Quercus virginiana to insect damage. It is sometimes assumed that such genetic variation does not occur or that physiological differences be-