Lily

Lilium consists of ~80 species native to the Northern Hemisphere; commercial hybrids are used in a wide range of floricultural products, including flowering potted plants, cut flowers, and garden plants (herbaceous perennial). While lily breeding has been conducted for centuries, most breeding breakthroughs occurred during the past 50 years. These have included interspecific hybridization, intersectional hybridization, and various methods to overcome gametophytic self incompatibility and embryo abortion using pre-fertilization (cut style, grafted style), post-fertilization (ovary-slice culture, ovule culture, embryo culture) methods. The continued use of these and other modern techniques (polyploidization, molecular biology) will ensure creation of new phenotypes for the market.