Something like 0.01%

I've read that DA plants 150,000-300,000 rose seeds per year. If they introduce three plants from that crop, assuming the minimum of 150,000, that comes to a seedling to introduction rate of just .002%. Yikes. If you go with the higher figure of seedlings, the success rate is just .001%

EDIT: I just googled "David Austin breeding program" and it's worse than my calculations. They now plant 350,000 seeds per year. Yikes, indeed.

Being the compulsively curious creature that I am, I had to know how many seedlings Kordes plants per year. It's 1,200,000. I don't know how many introductions per year they average, but, that's a huge number to grow just to discard most of them. OH, the tragedy, lol.

Meilland plants 200,000 seeds per year.

I couldn't immediately find info on Delbard, but I'm sure it's out there. Give me time, lol. I'm watching a video on Youtube that might have some answers. I'm watching mostly because the blurb mentions Ralph Moore!

Paul, I'm sure you have roses I'd kill for (well, maybe just a little non-fatal maiming, lol). If I had the money, I'd offer to pay for trying tissue culture on them! It seems positively spiteful of them to be so beautiful, but then deny it to us. 77-07-12 in particular sounds and looks like the type of rose that could take the rose world by storm...if you could propagate it.

77-07-12 is a remarkable rose, its true. In desperation this spring, I even budded a few sticks of Pink Clouds with it, but none of them took. For whatever reason, this rose does NOT want to be propagated. Its probably the nasty aspects of the Kordesii genes.

Wow...it wouldn't even take on Pink Clouds. It really IS recalcitrant.

Thank you so much for the amazing responses.

I had a feeling it was going to be a small percentage of seedlings that check off all the boxes but, WOW, that is an overwhelming amount of seeds that get planted each year!

What got me thinking about it was my experience planting a few annuals from seed every year. Most things turn out as expected. But, occasionally, something really unusual shows up among the seedlings, and I always wonder about the genetics and chance involved.

Its one of the things that got to me eventually: all the work involved in generating thousands of seedlings every year, and throwing most of them on the compost pile within a year.

That would have been so heartbreaking, Paul.

@Sheila z8a Rogue Valley OR Not so much "heartbreaking" as it was "why am I working this hard when 99.95% of what I do ends up being composted??" In the end, I had no good answer to that question. It ended up feeling like there was very little reward for the work, when all was said and done.

No good deed goes unpunished.

Its one of the things that got to me eventually: all the work involved in generating thousands of seedlings every year, and throwing most of them on the compost pile within a year.

My annual seeds come to me ready to plant in neat little packages. You had the added work of pollination and harvesting seeds, which I can't imagine.

Still, some of this is on my mind because I decided to do some carnations again recently, and I've done them many times through the years, but this time I have one of those amazing surprises pop up among the seedlings, and I'm thinking:

"I really want more like this one! Should I plant the rest of the pack to see if more like this one turn up? But that would mean planting hundreds of seeds. I'd have to be ruthless and toss all the ordinary ones to make room for potential special ones. What if by some weird random event this is the only special one in the pack? Will I be able to propagate this one that I already have???"

You should be able to root cuttings of a carnation. If you can keep it alive and growing long enough to provide them, give it a try. It's the only way to be certain you're going to get the identical plant you want. Other seedlings may approximate it, but will likely not be identical.