We got most of the latest Ukrainian hybrids scions on hand now and will be grafting them this Spring. Hopefully to be able to cross them in 2 to 3 years. Breeding hybrids persimmons are very time consuming. I got a 2 yrs old potted Gora Roman Kosh and hopefully it will flowers soon then the fun begins.
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I forgot to add JT-02 in my statement. I already crossed Prok with 400-5 and currently had 5 going into third leaf offsprings in pots. One of them had a second growth spurt and had male flowers. I will name this series "Omaha "(Prok X 400-5). Prok has a larger fruits for a DV plus the larger fruits from Rossyanka. These fve hybrids offsprings will be super cold hardy with larger fruits. I got 6 seeds of Tam Kam x 400-5 and will grow them out this spring in pots. Exciting stuffs.
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It is the same if not faster than breeding Citrus for specific characteristics.
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Great point, several lily society members were performing embryo rescue in-house with available chemicals. Manipulating the concentration of different chemicals enabled the newer " impossible crosses" of the orienpets, asiapets, and LA hybrids.
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@tonyOmahaz5 @jrd51 I am very interested and excited about the discussion you guys are having and it is a primary reason for me creating this particular thread. However, for the sake of posterity and keeping things where folks might want to look for them, it may behoove us to transfer further discussion on the specifics of persimmon breeding to the hybrid persimmons thread.
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good point
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An interesting idea that I might consider myself if I was to see a goal. True there are many possibilities to explore but much has already been done. The existing hybrids offer opportunities for simple crosses kaki X virginiana both ways and with several hybrids existing one could easily satisfy their scientific curiosity with ordinary hand pollination. It would take some time to grow the plants and yes some serious equipment which I already have most of. If starting from zero one should expect to spend over $1K for basic equipment and supplies $2K might get a respectable setup going. It is basically tissue culture. You rescue the embryo from the seed before it is aborted by the tree and grow it out in TC. If one was very determined and would stick with it for 10-30 years they might get some success. Such endeavors are usually carried out by a staffed lab at a university or government facility.
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Another bit of information. I have produced and grown out over 200 hybrid X American. The plants are extremely variable in outcome but this coming spring a large number should show their fruiting characteristics clearly now that they are about 13 feet more or less. So far only 1-5% show anything That one might wish to carry on. Most have small fruit and or few fruit. Some grow like weeds straight up to the sky, 1% are short bushy. Some useless but fewer than random seedlings. 15 years to do all that. In producing new trees large numbers must be gown out over many years. It is said it can take 100 years to bring a new tree to market and I believe at least 2-3 generations at 10+ years each would be required so 30-60 years. A great project for a younger person with land and a life that would not crash the project with moving to another city. Claypool had 2000 hand pollinated trees on about 5 acres Jerry had a thousand or something like that. It takes space, 2 acres could do a small effort but 4 would be much better. Tractor , mower, chipper ,stump grinder is what I use. I am stratifying seed now from my best crosses for my next generation so with my seed or plants one gets a generation head start.
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Thank you very much for your responses. That is the kind of information I was hoping to gather and reinforces some of the prior talking points on this thread that it is generally not necessary for more embryo rescue.
The main thing I had considered it for would be if someone were to acquire a cPCNA persimmon and male pollen from a Morris Burton (known to share non astringent genes with kaki). This would cut one generation of crosses from the mix.
How do we know this?
Here’s why I ask: Like the rest of us, I’m very interested in NA persimmons. I believe that the best short-term prospect is a back-cross of JT-02 x Taishu, which should produce 5% NA offspring in the first generation. That’s if JT-02 behaves like a kaki. But there is a real risk that the DV ancestry conflicts somehow with Kaki NA mechanisms. It might not work.
An alternative would be to develop the NA trait in a pure DV. People have talked about Morris Burton but the story ebbs and flows in a way that makes me suspect that MB is not reliably non-astringent.
As I understand it, scientists studying persimmons have identified the location of the A gene in PCNA Kakis. But I don’t think they’ve characterized the gene well enough to say, “Hey, there’s the same gene in another species!” What did I miss?
FWIW, I bought some MB scions just to try it out.
@SMC_zone6 shared an email with details suggesting this which I’m sure you have reviewed before. I had to read the message a few times to pick up on it.
Persimmon in particular does not breed very true. That means the offspring is variable and planning a Mendelian cross and having expectation of predictable results wont usually work out. One reason is that Persimmon has multiple copies of each chromosome and to fully express a specific trait reliably each copy must be altered to exclude the unfavorable traits. One might get some of the desired results in a few of the first cross but those plants still probably have copies of the undesired traits which may express in the future generations and with males having the same multiple copies and unknown traits the math gets very complicated. I think an easier method to make a jump to better offspring might be to induce male flowers on known excellant female trees and use that pollen to do standard pollen/paintbrush crosses. Much simpler, the pollen is from trees with known traits and the seed should be all female thereby reducing the number of trees to grow out by half. This is low cost, no lab, fewer trees to grow out , just much better for experimenters. Claypool used this method.
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"In his
report back to me he stated that Morris Burton appears to share an
allele with kaki. "
It’s already there and has been out there for years.
I am very interested in methods to achieve this if you have any personal experience or literature you could point me towards. Others have mentioned causing stress to the tree as a method (along with a few other ways).
Sometimes you just get lucky too…
I have intended to try this myself and have the chemicals , one mixes two chemicals and sprays the limb before they flower and , magic , if you get lucky , male flowers on female trees. Claypool just searched for male flowers on female trees but this method should induce male flowers. I have the documents and could foreword them to you. The induvial chemicals store well but rapidly deteriorate once mixed so a fresh mix is made for each application.
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@Bestseed , thanks for your helpful posts.
Can the male flowers on high quality female varieties be used to pollinate other females to get quality offspring?
I have many seeds of JT02x Maru (a high quality Kaki PVNA). As well as numerous others pollinated by Maru. Should I expect the offspring to be generally of high quality?
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This seems very speculative. Do we have any reason to believe that he wasn’t just guessing?
See Richard’s comments to me concerning. how little we actually know about the A/NA genes (or deletions). It seems impossible that anyone actually characterized the NA gene in Kaki and then identified it in Virginiana.
On the other hand, it may be entirely possible that there was a separate mutation in DV that had a similar effect. At this point there’s no evidence for that either.
I would not expect direct carryover of traits however the odds of producing good offspring should be improved but still producing and growing out a hundred or more trees would improve the odds. A hundred might produce one or more you like. I stopped at 200 because to double my chances of good ones i need 200 more 400 total , then to double again i need 400 more 800 total, you can see the numbers get large. I can manage 200 but not 800. 5 foot spacing or less in row and 18 between rows works out well.
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Lack of space for breeding programs was the main reason UC Riverside moved its experimental station from Rubidoux to Exeter.
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