What?
THE HYBRIDIZER'S FORUM is an on-line community devoted to discussing orchid hybridizing and collaborating on specific projects.
 
Some material is published for the general public and can be viewed without membership, however forums for interactive discussion are only open to members. THE HYBRIDIZER'S FORUM rewards contributing members with higher membership levels, which reveal additional forum features.  
 
Why?
Whether you are a hobbyist interested in learning to buy better seedlings or whether you are a professional looking for objective data on ploidy of grexes and cultivars, pollen for a special hybrid, or collaboration in various orchid hybridizing endeavors, THE HYBRIDIZER'S FORUM is intended to facilitate a wide range of orchid hybridizing interests.
 
Current special projects at THE HYBRIDIZER'S FORUM include Dean Stock's Ploidy list (a list of grexes and cultivars of known ploidy to facilitate proper mating of plants), and Project Indigo: The Violacea Coerulea Registry Project in which we will be collecting and publishing data on the percentage of blues and saturation of color in violcaea coerulea crosses (with the long term goal of unraveling the genetics, and the short term goal of identifying those crosses and cultivars that show the most promise in breeding blues.)
 
There are also informal discussions taking place on a number of topics and a photo gallery where members share examples. Members actively trade pollen and plant material, leveraging the collections of others to improve their own breeding lines.
 
Where?
http://www.thehybridizersforum.com/yabb/YaBB.pl
 
Whom?
THE HYBRIDIZER'S FORUM was started by Robert Bedard (Robert Bedard Horticulture) in 2007, with an agreement by Dr. A. Dean Stock PhD. (Canyon Orchids) to participate and publish his ploidy list. The forum was migrated in 2008 to a server belonging to Rob Shepherd (Sapphire Dragon Orchids), and now is being mostly managed by Rob, with Robert doing some custom coding, and with Dean contributing to policy decisions as well as being our resident expert on genetics. The three principals have nearly 100 years of orchid experience between them, (currently 98 years.)