Air layering

Greetings, There is quite a bit of scientific research that gives a more evidenced based argument against what you are asserting in your post. Well ageing is associated with two factors, epigenetic tagging and telomere reduction. The epigenome are tags that are not part of DNA but applied to as it ages. Imagine growth rings layer down year after year the thickness of can be read showing periods of growth or drought and reduced growth. In humans and animals malnourishment during puberty creates a lot of tags that have profound effects on gene expression later in life. Most tags are wiped from eggs and sperm however many are passed on sometimes for generations before removal. Also Older parents pass on more tags then younger parents. But that’s Gene expression. Regarding ageing telomeres are a particular set of repeating DNA at the end of each chromosome each replication of DNA is not perfect and tolemeres protect DNA from loosing meaningful data. The loss of telomere length is directly related to the age or an organism. But Telomere loss is not absolute. In plants the cells capable or Telomergenisis are located in the roots and buds. Buding, grafting, root suckers all the things we do to propagate clones also positively Telomergenis thus halting and in some cases reverting the ageing process.

And in the case of animals they already have drugs that wipe epigenomic tags and effect telemergenis

The original sheep clone Dolly would come to mind as a case for clones being the same age as the source
http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/15204559950020003

10 years later,
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/dolly-sheep’s-cloned-sisters-aging-gracefully

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Hi @lordkiwi , i respectfully say that am skeptical. Primarily because no scientific study(or collection of scientific studies) have proven or reliably predicted the likelihood of ‘eternal life’ among tomatoes, peaches and other conventional crops. There might be some herbaceous species as ferns-- which may have cloned themselves for millions of years, but for an indeterminate tomato or a peach(from which serial airlayers could be obtained) to live forever and be perpetually-at-their-prime(in productivity) in a hospitable and disease-free hydroponic environment is very difficult to envision. Moreover, even though it is true that telomeres may negatively correlate with age in some species, it also actually positively correlates with age in others.

lastly, and in a humorous way, i was posting my ‘assertions’ for the sole reason that if you are a fruit-grower-- cynicism and pessimism about the possibility of eternal life is a safer path to ply compared with being optimistic about it and be wrong a few years or decades from now. Or 200 years from now if you’re growing jujubes or black mulberries.

what trying to say is that if all of us were to believe that cuttings of figs and grapes are pre-destined to strike serially for hundreds of years, with each of them growing to be productive trees for all eternity(in the absence of diseases or stressors), and if so happened that am right about senescence, then that would be the end of the cultivars. But if we diversify our propagation techniques by grafting them on to seedlings or some other method, we could somehow preserve the cultivars much, much longer, rather than have them grow on their own roots. The roots that are theoretically as old as the original seedlings they were obtained from. Possibly with short telomeres if so happened they are telomere-length-dependent,and if they are the species which senesce with shortened telomeres.

that might be true for some species, but the following seems to say otherwise for conventional fruit trees as apples and cherries
http://www.actahort.org/members/showpdf?booknrarnr=738_47

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True one study can not be applied to all plant types nor can we ignore it till its proven for one plant type or another. However once a theory is proposed it must be tested, re theorized, retested etc. What I took away from the abstract of that study is the research still works under the theory that telomere lengths are still a indicator of plant ages, and that fruiting trees long lives are likely resulting from stability. Another study looked at a genus with various degrees of extended logeivty and found more correlation. With trees one must look at time scales of hundreds of years.

I simply feel that once evidence begins to present its self its our response ability to update are dialog even if the old dialog served a greater good. To that end I absolutely agree with you that we should not encourage people to stick to cultivars for there own sake. Even if its the most resistant most delicious type ever created its evolution is fixed and unchanging while the rest of the world around it the bacteria and fungus are not simply going to idle and give up.

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Great stuff from both prospectives, exactly what I like about this forum, without animosity, I learned something from both perspectives.

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telomeres definitely say a lot about longevity, and not just among plants but also animals. It is in fact strong evidence of ageing in perennial plants. As mentioned in that link you posted— each cell division signifies ‘replicative senescence’. Compelling proof that relying on cuttings, airlayers, or suckers may equate to a mortal existence of certain species, since cells have ‘finite replicative capacity’. Perhaps the strongest theoretical argument against the notion of eternal life in the absence of disease and/or stress.
and seriously doubt the act of airlayering or striking a cutting will rejuvenate the cells into a juvenile stage.

Well we don’t use air layering or cuttings to get to the juvenile stage. Were often using cuttings and grafting the skip juvenile and save 18 years before fruiting like with citrus. We can get cells back to the juvenile stage in lab cultures which is how they propagate disease free plants like blackberries etc. There is a lot of interesting research going on, Telemeres are not the end all be all TERT process restore telemere’s lengths all the time. I don’t know how we got on the topic of eternal life, but I do know if you have 3 wishes make sure to with for eternal life and eternal youth. And if you can only choose one super power don’t get wolverine claws.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vQ2RVqJCNM

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lol! At any rate, i guess was also referring to the others who believe that perennials equate to eternal life in the absence of diseases/pests/stress. Cuttings and airlayers do equate to ‘instant’ maturity or precocity of the clone–because the stem source is mature. However, it seems to be only advisable on long-lived species such as figs, mangoes and grapes, especially those with long juvenile periods when grown from seed. The OP was asking for feedback about doing it on peach trees, and peaches don’t really have long lives(apart from being disease and pest-magnets) even when grafted on seedlings, so it is not just a worry about pests, but also a worry about the specimens ‘acting their age’ when grown on their own roots.

moreover, grafting to seedlings don’t just impart disease resistance. One study have posted here indicated that grafting to seedlings help rejuvenate or “dilute the age” of the graft.

Watch out young people were comming for you.

Have any of you used peat moss instead of actual sphagnum moss? I know they’re basically the same, except the sphagnum moss is still in moss form.

Here is the results of an air layer experiment I did on a fig tree, started the layers on 4-22-17 and updated on 5-26-17.

  1. Cut 1" all around the branch - Has worked great.

  2. Cut 1" half around the branch - Has worked okay.

  3. No cut around the branch - Has not worked as of yet.

I injected water into cups once a week (temp high 80’s). Top foliage on all 3 are in good condition.

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THat is GREAT. Thanks for posting the follow ups. Please show us what the final rootball looks like when you cut the air layer off the tree.

BTW…on the one you did no cut on, do you rough up the bark at all or basically just do nothing at all to the bark? The ones I’ve seen where they don’t cut a stip from around the mother tree, the do sort of rough up the bark with something like course sand paper. Just curious if you did that or just left the bark untouched? Thanks.

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I didn’t do anything to the bark.

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Thanks. I’m really glad you tried this. I’ve heard a few people suggest you don’t have to cut or rough up the bark and just by having it under wet dirt/moss (well, "surrounded by) that it will sprout roots. I think your experiment to date has already proven that not to be true. I know it might still sprout roots, but if so it will be so far behind the others that it doesn’t make much sense to use such a slow rooting system…and it may not ever work. Again, thanks for posting. I continued to be interested in air layers even though they don’t seem to be a very popular propagation method for some reason.

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Hey guys-- When do you suppose is the best time to set an air-layer for a fig? At what time of year are you successfully doing it? Thoughts on why a certain time is the best? Please advise, thanks.

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I’m not that experienced doing them. Seems like when actively growing. I’m mailing two out today I removed mid-summer. I just detached two a few days ago. I did two rounds rounds of air layers this year and both worked. I like the sealed method over the open just because I can’t monitor the open ones as I’m not here half the time during the summer. The sealed types you set and forget. Both work very well.

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Late spring to mid summer is when I have done it. You can even set them to root over the winter, though I haven’t personally done it. My opinion would say active, vigorous growth is ideal, but figs throw roots out like crazy.

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Fig roots need warm soil to grow. Same for both rooting cuttings and air layers. So I’d say set air layers as soon as it warms in spring and allow two months of warm weather as a cut off date in late summer.

Here that would mean April to May for setting early air layers. And sometime in August as the last good date to set them.

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How did those rooted peaches do?

Hi Matt, i concur with everybody’s input. It is best that airlayers be made as soon as sap starts flowing in spring, since you want your clone to have as much time to callus and grow roots, especially if you have short growing seasons. Also, doing this prior to the clone’s foliage/green growth reaching full-size gives the clone the ‘option’ to limit growth on as-needed basis, say-- if the girdling somehow compromised xylem flow.

much like when trying to strike cuttings, it is best to remove fully-developed leaves and just let the cutting ‘decide’ how big the leaves of its subsequent growth would be post-separation from mother tree. Water-deprived trees with undamaged roots will respond by growing smaller leaves(less surface area)to limit water loss due to transpiration/exposure, and striking cuttings is evidently the most stressful way of deprivation, since there aren’t any roots

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I read somewhere that the life span of a tree depends mainly on the tree age of it’s root system. So a grafted or budded tree will live as long as the rootstock. So if a seedling is used as the rootstock, then the tree will live as long as the seedling normally would.

Airlayered plants’ roots come from the parent tree branch, so a new airelayer’s starting age is the same age as the parent tree. This implies that we can’t propagate a tree variety indefinitely by airlayer. So it might be false. There might be other factors involved.

This still doesn’t explain what happens when you air layer a grafted tree. Is the starting age the same as the rootstock or the top?