What Is a Hybrid Seed or Plant?

When hybridization of a plant is successful, the child is an improvement over the parents. Scientists may use the pollen of one type of corn to fertilize the eggs of another to produce better taste or a higher yield. If they are mating two lilacs, the child may be a different color or smell sweeter.

Plant Reproduction

Every plant has a set of chromosomes that it shares when the pollen of one plant fertilizes the egg of another. If the parents are different, the child will be a hybrid that is different from both parents.

Natural Mutation

Plants change naturally from generation to generation; bees do not check chromosomes before transferring pollen.

Polipoidy

Most hybrids contain two different sets of chromosomes (diploid); when parents with more than two sets of chromosomes form an offspring (polypoidy), the hybrid may reproduce copies of parent or grandparent plants rather than itself.

Geography and Species

Climate zones and plant species often limit natural mutation and determine the success or failure of artificial hybridization.

Crossing Strains

Humans have cross-bred similar plants for centuries in attempts to improve them---usually by cross-pollination, but also by grafting.

Sterile Hybrids

Polyploid hybrids are often sterile and must be propagated by division, and developers often treat hybrid seeds with chemicals to control propagation.

Resources

• The Science of Hybrids
• Hybrid Varieties and Saving Seed
• Hybridizing Daylilies