Breeding New Fruit Tree Landraces

[Justin]

@hobilus

also, welcome to the forum @Justin . It sounds like youre doing some righteous stuff. ill be interested to hear more about it as it unfolds.

Thanks dude, that’s nice of you to welcome me

@Fusion_power

The entire foundation of this thread is about to be wiped out as a breeding concern. Why and how? With full genome mapping of virtually all plants on earth, we will be able to map out advantageous genome configurations.

I’m going to make a guess that such an effort will only result in a very slight understanding. I am under the impression that while we do have some understanding of the role of some genes, it might be somewhat comparable to our understanding of whale language. We know what some sounds mean, and we have catalogues countless sounds, but we have by no means cracked the language.

@Fusion_power

No matter what you think about genetic diversity or grexes or landraces or other composites of a genome, it will be so far in the rear view mirror that nobody will even consider it any more.

I would bet… well all of my money really, on that never being true in my lifetime.

And that’s not to say direct gene manipulation doesn’t have value.

@hobilus

The profit motive and even more simply the need to have such efforts pay for themselves will continue to favor “improvements” that are objectively maladaptive, like terminator gene or round-up ready.

Yeah, there is some really deep immorality in a lot of commercial breeding for sure! Terminator genes and male sterility being among them, and yes for sure the use of toxic chemicals. I am so much more appreciative of efforts like making perennial rice and that kind of thing, that can be geared towards enabling soil building rather than the intense efforts leading to radical soil erosion, the death of river systems, and all that devilish nonsense.

@hobilus

Carol Deppe, in her book “Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties” gives the example of the first genetically engineered tomato (‘flavr savr’ ) which (ironically?) was awful even by grocery store standards.

I’ve heard great things about that book! Also for an insight into why commercial tomatoes are generally so terrible (and for sure customers actually don’t want them, blaming customers is really stupid! To believe capitalism is driven merely by the demand of consumers is intensely naïve, and in particular overlooks the generally psychopathic nature of corporations), this video gives a lot of insight, and goes into breeding programs also:

Why Fruits Have Lost Their Vitamins | ENDEVR Documentary

And I totally agree with you about the unpredictable nature of genetics. It’s a complex system, completely different from some kind of linear mechanistic system.

@Is a non-astringent American-Asian hybrid persimmon within reach?

Another possibility - What if full Asian non-astringent seeds were trialed in the thousands to just find pure Asian cold hardy genetics? I know Miss Kim is supposed to be able to survive in z6B already. Why not get started on seeds there? Is there something I’m missing? F2 citrange winter hardiness trial This crazy person is growing citrus in Pennsylvania. If that can be done, why not persimmons?

Looks like a cool project but very long thread, would you be willing to give a brief summary of how the project went? I see it seems to have been started in 2019, curious of the progress. Oh wait… I meant the citrus project i the link within the quote. Funnily enough I am growing astringent persimmon though. From seed But only 2 or 3. I’d love to grow more but had limited seeds, and they’re very far in the back seat due to all my other work. But I hope they survive. I chose the older astringent type because the fruit is still delicious (when old enough) but you can also use the younger fruit to make kakishibu, which is excellent for colouring cloth, and for applying to wood to protect it. Wonderful substance.

@swincher

That’s my plan with the decentralized avocado breeding effort I’m organizing here in the PNW. I’ve got a few dozen allegedly hardy cultivars on a handful of greenhouse multi-graft trees, hoping for magical recombinations of different traits that impart cold hardiness.

Fantastic!

@swincher

I’ve got a few dozen allegedly hardy cultivars on a handful of greenhouse multi-graft trees, hoping for magical recombinations of different traits that impart cold hardiness.

Have you just been planting the seeds you collected? Would you consider the idea I proposed, of growing the seedlings (maybe even in a greenhouse for speed and protection) then making grafts from them to an older tree so that you can speed up the time to first flowering, then cross them all, then use those seeds to plant out? I’m figuring that would be the fastest way of getting those magical recombinations.

Or if that wouldn’t be possible due to your climate, maybe grafting them to a friend’s tree in a warmer climate or well established greenhouse tree? Basically a shortcut to making that hybrid swarm. Though if not I of course wish your project the best of luck anyway!

@swincher

But in the end, I’m not thinking I’ll create a landrace, that seems like something that would be many lifetimes away for long-maturation plants like avocado trees. I guess a decentralized bioregional breeding project is basically step one towards a landrace, though.

Yeah there could be ways of working on a distributed landrace project if pollen were exchanged. Might be hard in the post depending on how long that species’ pollen lasts but I did have that thought about bananas, like sending and receiving refrigerated pollen. Just as an example, I have a tomato pollen library in my refrigerator Just from my own plants but it means they don’t have to be flowering all at once for me to still be able to make crosses.