Much of the activity in the Craig breeding programs was with regal pelargoniums, or Martha Washington geraniums, P. xdomesticum. These, too, were released mostly through the Oglevee organization. During the more than 30 years, Dr. Craig and his students did some remarkable things with regals.
Dr. Craig and his students broke through the functional sterilities that plagued the older regal cultivars so that regals were no longer such a challenge to breed. If a plant can't make seed, nor will it make viable pollen, it is a genetic dead-end.
He dramatically reduced the need for regals to need a cold period (vernalization) before they set flower buds. Some of Craig's regals can come into bloom year-round, regardless of temperature.
He minimized the need for regals to be provided with supplemental lighting before they would bloom (both photoperiodism and light accumulation). These phenomena are not entirely broken even in the Craig regals, but the Craig regals are certainly much easier to bring into bloom than older regal cultivars.
Some of Dr. Craig's regals display extremely good garden performance, setting flower buds and blooming repeatedly throughout a central Pennsylvania summer, even when planted in full sun. This heat-tolerant outdoor-performing germplasm has not yet been incorporated into commercial germplasm, yet it has the potential to be a wonderful outdoor bedding plant.
And Dr. Craig and his students uncovered regal germplasm which is ethylene-insensitive, so that the flowers do not drop their petals after pollination, or as they age. This shatter-free trait also has yet to be incorporated into commercial products, yet it has the potential to produce extremely long floral displays in regals, and to enable shipping-in-flower.
So what is G2 doing with this wealth of unique germplasm? Nothing. At least not yet.
Why? Because regals do not have a very large market presence at the moment.
Why not? Because growers do not like producing them.
Why don't growers like to produce regals?
Regals are hard to bench-run as a crop. The older regal cultivars --- those developed before the Craig varieties --- were a challenge to bloom consistently as a crop. Colors didn't match very well, so that you'd have to hand-select plants for each shipment. This is inefficient on all levels. A grower needs to be able to bench-run a Pelargonium crop.
Regals are difficult to root from an URC. Ecke/Oglevee indicates in their marketing literature re regal production that "Twenty-five percent rooting loss should be planned during propagation". It is amazing to us that regals are produced at all, considering those kinds of losses on the rooting bench.
Most regals also appear to be a dinner banquet for whiteflies. In today's sustainable horticulture market, producing a crop which must be repeatedly sprayed with pesticides in order to control a pest makes regals a challenging crop to promote. Luckily, there is genetic variability for whitefly susceptibility in the Craig heritage Pelargoniums, although this material has not yet been incorporated into commercial germplasm.
Regals still require special treatment in order to initiate flower buds. Despite the dramatic improvements that the Craig program made in reducing the need for cold and additional light, the current regal production protocols still call for a cool bright treatment: 4 weeks at 50F/10C, while under 16 hr daylengths with at least 10 footcandles at bench height. Although these treatments are dramatically reduced over the older cultivars, nonetheless, they are viewed by the grower as "something special" needed to produce regals. Again, in the Craig heritage collection there is genetic availability available to break both the cold requirement, as well as the need for high light during flower bud initiation.
And significantly, regals are seen by the growers as a pot crop, not a high-volume bedding plant. In order to change this perception, regals need to be developed which can be produced with the same kinds of production protocols as a zonal. From the production of stock plants, to rooting, to shipping, to growing at the wholesale and retail level, regals need to perform just like zonals.
When this occurs, if this occurs, regals will be more commonly grown, and perhaps as commonly grown as zonals.
As well they should. Regal pelargoniums can be absolutely gorgeous.
