Basics of Designing an Orchid
The information needed to start designing a specific orchid is all over the wiki. Here I'm gathering together the information I use. I'll try to explain simply how mutations can be used to design a flower of a specific size and colour.
Orchid Genomes
Each orchid is made up of genes. These genes set the colour of each part of the orchid and also specify whether it is standard size, or a giant or dwarf orchid. Researchers have found the genomes for the 4 standard orchids, using solvents.
| Orchid | Sabertooth | KIRGGUGIOUIGRGGIOUGUOUGUOUGUOK | 28 |
| Orchid | Arabian Nights | KOUGUOUGUOUGUOIRGGOROOURYIGRIUOK | 30 |
| Orchid | Shangri-La | KYIROIGUROIOUGUOUGUOUGUOIRYYIUOIK | 31 |
| Orchid | Hidden in the Darkness | KYRYROYGUOUGUOUYURYYYURORGGRYYURGGGK | 34 |
A note about gene length - when counting the gene length, the initial and final K is not counted. This is important for working out which letter will be swapped when using mutagens too.
Using Hidden in the Darkness as an example
Although these look like a long string of meaningless letters, if you break it down it starts to become clearer :) Lets take Hidden in the Darkness as an example of how the letters code genes and therefore the colours and size of the orchid. Using Orchid Genome Theory we can separate out the different parts of the coding.
The size of orchids is always standard size (like Arabian Nights, Shangri-La and Sabertooth) unless there is a string of letters coding a giant (ROYG) or a dwarf (GYOR) gene. In Hidden in the Darkness, there is 1 giant gene in the genome, and so this orchid is a Giant x 1.
KYRY ROYG UOUGUOUYURYYYURORGGRYYURGGGK
Each petal, the stem and the leaves has a different letter combination to determine its colour. Colour is made by adding together the colours coded by each gene for a certain petal/stem/leaf. The letter code is O = cyan, G = yellow and Y = magenta. An example should make this clearer :)
Rx (where x is a colour gene) determines the colour of the upper petal.
KY RY RO YGUOUGUOUYU RY YYU RO RG G RY YU RG GGK
So the upper petal has 7 contributing genes - RY, RO, RY, RO, RG, RY, RG - or in other words, 2 cyan, 3 magenta, 2 yellow. EldradUlthran has put together a colour chart to show all possible colours. The upper petal is 232 on the chart - a shade of purple.
Note that the same letters in the string can code several genes. The first RO here is also part of the ROYG that codes for the giant x 1 size of Hidden in the Darkness. This also means that if you want to have a giant gene in your orchid, you have to have a cyan gene in the upper petal (RO = upper petal cyan)
xxx and URx determines the colour of the lower petals.
KYRYROYGUOUGUOUY UR-Y-YY URO RGGRYY URG GGK
For Hidden in the Darkness, the string URYYY gives 2 magenta genes, then there is one cyan gene and 1 yellow gene all coding the colour of the lower petals. This is 121 on Eldrad's chart, a dusky pink colour.
Ux determines the colour of the stem.
KYRYROYG UO UG UO UY URYYYURORGGRYYURGGGK
So there are 2 cyan, 1 magenta and 1 yellow genes coding for stem colour in Hidden in the Darkness. This is code 211 and an aqua colour.
Changing Letters Using Mutagens
I wanted to make a dwarf orchid, so looked at the basic orchid genomes to see which would be easy to alter to get the GYOR dwarf gene string incorporated.
This is the genome for Arabian Nights:
KOUGUOUGUOUGUOIR GGOR OOURYIGRIUOK
It has a string of letters only 1 letter different than the dwarf gene.
To change this to GYOR the G in position 17 needs to be swapped for a Y. (Remember the first and last K of the genome don't count when numbering the genes). Single letters can be altered one per cross using Mutagenics, crossing 2 bulbs in a greenhouse. This gives 2 bulbs back (the lower number bulb is from the left splint, A, and the second bulb is from the right splint, B).
First I looked on the mutagens table to find out which mutagens swap a gene at position 17 in Arabian Nights. Arabian Nights is length 30, so I checked 3rd column from the right. From the table, I saw K10, K11, LE14, KH2 all swap a gene at position 17. I then looked through the table to find what other gene gets swapped with each mutagen, for each of the standard orchid lengths.
| K10 | A 17 | B 28 30 31 34 |
| K11 | A 17 | B 7 7 7 8 |
| LE14 | A 17 | B 17 18 19 20 |
| KH2 | B 17 | A 3 3 3 4 |
Then I checked each of these gene positions in the relevant orchids until I found one where the letter at that position was a Y (letter needed). Position 20 in Hidden in the Darkness is a Y, so LE14 will work for this mutation.
From the table you can see that position 17 is swapped on A, which means the bulb placed on the left splint. LE14 works on A17 and also B20 (position 20 for Hidden in the Darkness length genomes). So to make the cross, I placed an Arabian Nights bulb on the left splint (so that the mutagen would swap the letters at this bulb's position 17) and a Hidden in the Darkness bulb on the right splint (so that the mutagen swaps over the Y gene in position 20). This put the Y into the genome to make a 1 x dwarf - (see Spicy's Dainty Dwarf on my main orchids page).
