The Breeding Spreadsheet
You may well have been redirected to this page via a link from my posting on the Facebook Group, Snowdrops and Galanthophiles. There, I attempted to post a spreadsheet for potential snowdrop breeding to combine different floral features for which cultivars have been historically selected and named.
The driver behind its somewhat laborious creation was to see how many possible combinations there were of the various mutant phenotypes (as I'm assured by Biology PHD, Julian Sutton, that they are correctly termed) that occur in Galanthus. One of two others might have made the selection and nudged the 1768 total for those included upwards, but the features included are chosen for being distinct and straight-forwardly defined.
Conveniently, these mutant phenotypes fall two groups, the first to do with the structure of the flower (including the spathe) which are found on the left hand side of the spreadsheet. The second group, along the top, cover the forms and coloration of outer segment marking. I chose outer segment marking as I believe that as snowdrop breeding advances, the inner segment marking will become less of a significant factor; after all its a less visible part of the flower over its life.
The spreadsheet shows clearly that there is plenty of room for anyone who fancies the idea of breeding for a particular combination and that there are plenty of options for breeders don't have overlap in their areas of developmental interest or endlessly duplicate what has already ben achieved. The spreadsheet is not designed to show you how many crosses and/or generations might be required to reach a particular goal. Nor does it attempt to project any sort of timeline for progress or take into account which species or hybrids might be involved.
Concentrating around the top left hand corner are some cells that in 2020 were shaded darker, denoting that the combined mutant phenotypes existed, albeit in some cases, recently. An updated version would show a good many more darker-shaded cells, with more recent advances.
Galanthus forever!
Matt