Since the orchid plants are selected and traded based on
their flower appearances, the uncertainty about traits from
seedling-derived plants severely hinders their marketability.
The highly selected few elite slipper orchids with prizewinning
flowers that command extremely high prices
cannot be mass propagated and are generally used as
parental lines in crosses to produce new hybrid seeds. Our
plants directly induced from the FB base take about 6 mo
from a flowering orchid and can be immediately used for
clonal micropropagation to produce mature plants that
should be predicable, stable, and uniform in their genetic
traits. In addition, unlike seedling, the original plants or
main meristem need not be sacrificed.