But what I meant was, are any of these tasty hybrids giving tasty offspring from seed with the same climate adaptation, or are they more like F1s in that regard, with quite randomized offspring or some other fertility issues etc.?
@Jose-Albacete What would be your top hybrid plums variety recommendations for low to no spray northern Europe? Globus seems to be one 
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Hi James.
What you ask me is very difficult to answer, for one simple reason, and that is that I have eaten many good varieties of plum x apricot interspecifics from good breeders, pluots from Zaiger, Metis from Bradfor Genetics
-Metis
https://www.metis-fruits.com/en/origins.html#
Interspecific from Provedo nurseries in Spain (they are not plums, they are plum x apricot interspecific)
-Extreme Mulan
- Extreme Ariel
- Bella
-Moana
- Extreme Viana
And this winter I will receive many of the new Ibergen varieties
Having said all this, recommending interspecific varieties with absolutely mediocre flavor does not seduce me at all.
I prefer to recommend good European-type plum varieties, with very high resistance to everything (even PPV plum pox virus).
Look carefully, variety by variety, at the entire catalog of plums from the German breeder Artevos, since they are incredibly good plums, and very resistant to everything (you have to check their resistance in the file for each variety).
These varieties are really interesting, due to their very high taste quality, and their extreme resistance to almost everything.
Regards
Jose
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Has anyone ever tried growing any of these from seed? Or is it all done by cuttings? I’m really interested in the possibility of growing from seed so I’d love to hear some input on this. I assume there are negative issues with continually propagating from cuttings, that’s not sustainable longterm right?
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People have keep fruit tree genetics alive for hundreds of years through clonal propagation. Who knows how old some bananas and potatoes are for examples.
I agree that it is very nice to have plants somewhat true to seed, the reality with some things is that they are far removed from their natural relatives and to get them to become true to seed requires a lot more breeding efforts and i think results in a lesser quality fruit most likely. For most people that are into fruit growing for more than a couple decades grafting comes to mind with ease.
Mark shepard for example with chestnuts, put a lot of time and effort into hybridizing chinese and american to get a mixed result that is true to seed. So far he said he has just gotten more chinese chestnut heritage as the result. That is mostly because in the chestnut genetic bank Chinese genetics account for like 85% of what is the chestnut, so imagine how long it would take to get that 5% or less to become dominant, esp with potential future cross pollination etc.
In short, If you want to continue that thought line your on. It is a complicated path, unique to each plant family, species, and then what quality you want to achieve, if you are happy with euro plums like what I have growing from seed in the hundreds around my farm, that comes easy. Then look at america with pears and apples and wild pollinators, i think it is worse for pears but i am as far as just wanting to say it is complicated and nothing is so wrong with grafting. Most trees don’t live so long anyhow weather form seed or graft.
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Interesting examples, for which the decimation of the Gros Michel and the Potato Famine come to mind
Yeah and I think the word ‘somewhat’ is key there. So long as most (or even not most but some acceptable proportion of) offspring taste pretty good, I think variation is actually a good thing. Especially in our currently rapidly changing global climate.
So if no-one knows anyone who has grown any seeds from any of these fruit tree crosses, then do we know at least any stories from the breeding programs? Like, I wonder how the F2 turned out from those initial interspecial crosses? That would be interesting to know - like, maybe most of them were quite nice; or maybe it took thousands of plants over many generations to get anything good. I expect somewhere in between those, but I could imagine the former.
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Genetic diversity is the way evolution enables life to continue through climate changes. This is how it’s worked for hundreds of millions of years. This is how all life has evolved.
We pick what we like to eat in the here and now or can most successfully grow and ship/store during any individual snapshot of time.
It makes sense and is necessary perhaps to feed the exploded human population we have now to pick and breed our food sources.
Having said that it is at the cost of the natural diversity that is the mechanism for survival of all life.
Let’s just take one acre of farming land anywhere in the world that is growing a particular crop that has been bred or chosen for our consumption. In the here and now that works great. What happens if that acre of land goes through a drought? A few decades of wet? What if it gets colder or warmer? What if the pest and disease pressure changes?
And really there is no ‘if’ here as that is what the history of earth’s climate had done and will continue to do until we are consumed by our sun when it goes supernova in a handful of billion years from now.
So we hem ourselves in to a choice that we should know will not ultimately be sustainable.
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I agree with most of your post, with the exception of:
I think this may be true in harsh climates, but in the mild climate (9b where I live), I have pear and plum trees that are still surviving at going on a century. A century old Bartlett pear tree on my property is currently loaded with a bumper crop of pears even though it was totally neglected for the last 40 years. Many apple orchards in my home area are still growing the original plantings from when the area was settled in the 1870’s. My family has owned this property for 60 years, and rarely have mature fruit trees ever died because of disease or old age. The fruit trees here usually outlive the owners of the property. 
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Justin, I am answering you, and at the same time I am clarifying, because you are mixing up many concepts.
- Obtaining a variety from seed:
This is a very complex process only suitable for professionals or people with a lot of terrain and patience (it requires many years).
Justin, let’s start from the basis that in all sexual multiplication due to Mendel’s laws, there is genetic variability.
Therefore, when you sow a seed, it is tremendously difficult for the fruit produced by that tree to be of quality.
So how do the professionals do it?
Since we are talking about interspecifics, we start from a process called hybridization by “closed pollination”, that is, two varieties of different fruit types are pollinated, in a sealed environment, where there is no pollen from other varieties.
Once the two varieties have been hybridized (for example, a variety of plum with a variety of apricot), and we have the resulting fruits, hundreds of seeds of those fruits will be planted, since most of them, due to genetic variability, they will give poor quality of fruits.
And from those hundreds of trees that were obtained by planting the seeds, with luck a tree will be obtained that, due to the aforementioned genetic variability, produces fruits with the quality parameters that are being pursued, and we would have a selected variety. , which will subsequently multiply asexually (for example by grafting).
Normally, obtaining a good variety is a process that usually takes between 7 to 10 years and even more.
For the fruits to always be exactly the same, asexual multiplication is needed (there are various methods such as in-vitro multiplication, grafting, …).
The longevity of a tree is determined by the use or not of a rootstock, and the type of rootstock chosen.
For example, an apple tree multiplied by rooting, if it adapts well to the terrain and weather conditions, can be extremely long-lived, but it will not have the resistance and benefits that being grafted onto a suitable rootstock would bring.
The example of longevity provided by tbg9b is totally true, but it also has many drawbacks, and let me explain.
Imagine a variety of pear (it is indistinct), and you multiply it by rooting, and you plant it in the orchard.
This is going to happen “for sure”:
The pear tree will take at least 8 years to come into production (some varieties even 10 years), the harvests will not be homogeneous, and the tree will be exposed to all kinds of difficulties:
- Adaptability to soil Ph
- Adaptability to irrigation or drought conditions
- Resistance to diseases and soil pests such as nematodes, or the verticillium fungus.
And a host of other things.
While if we choose to graft, we will choose the rootstock appropriate to our soil conditions, the vigor we desire (larger or smaller trees), homogeneous harvests, improvement in fruit caliber, resistance to diseases and soil pests and we will also know which one. It will be approximately and depending on the pruning, the longevity of our tree.
Therefore, multiplying fruit trees from seed is not the most appropriate.
Regards
Jose
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The biggest problem with asexual propagation is the accumulation of viruses over time, which can seriously impact vigour and fruit quality. Most viruses can be eliminated through tissue culture, however. There are some cases, such as with Non-Pareil almonds where after decades of clonal propagation, newly propagated trees would have large amounts of “blind” wood. I believe this was thought to be related to the material becoming too old and accumulating too many harmful mutations.
Unless you’re growing seed from fruit trees pollinated by their wild relatives growing nearby, you won’t be adding any more genetic diversity to the population than already exists. Unlike most domesticated animals and annual crops, many perennial crops maintain quite a bit of genetic diversity when taken as a whole. This is especially true of outcrossing species like grapes and apples, which are only a handful of generations away from their wild ancestors. Clonal propagation enables us to keep that genetic diversity alive. Now that most domesticated grapes are capable of self-fertilization, growing seedlings would actually diminish genetic diversity.
The problem there was growing one genotype exclusively. Given the restricted genepool of potato varieties that made it to Europe, propagating potatoes by seed wouldn’t have helped with blight resistance either.
This is why germplasm repositories are so important. They keep the genetic diversity of our crop plants alive with the potential to use it in the future.
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Thanks for going into detail Jose. Although please note, I didn’t say obtaining a variety from seed. See:
So I am actually in favour of variety, by which I mean the opposite of a ‘stable variety’ - I mean I’m fine with the offspring all being different.
Yes, exactly.
Well that’s what I’m asking, in terms of being interested in the actual results if anyone has tried growing any of these interspecial hybrids from seed.
This again is why I am interested in hearing about direct (or indirect) experience with growing any of these tasty hybrids from seed. For example, if someone had a group of trees from one such delicious interspecial hybrid such that the seeds resulted from cross pollination within that group, how would the results be in practice? I understand that it might be that only a proportion of the trees might give nice fruit - if someone has tried I’d be interested in what proportion that might be. Also I would expect that after a number of generation one ought to be able to make a relatively reliably delicious population, such that each tree would still be different, but they’d all or almost all be delicious. We have this in self incompatible vegetable populations, for example. Just takes some generations to get there if the initial population isn’t reliably delicious.
I’ll give an example. I have eaten non-stabliised (I forget if it’s F2 or F3) hybrid fruit of Solanum lycopersicum (the domestic tomato) and Solanum galapagense, a wild tomato species which has no history of being eaten by humans even in its native habitat. The resulting fruit, which I grew this year, was delicious. Many of the cherry tomatoes are crosses between S. lycopersicum and S. pimpinelliifolium, and you can get nice fruit from this even in variable F2, so far as I understand. For breeding a commercial variety, the corporations or even smaller businesses will want a stable variety (therefore generally growing out to F8) and have specific phenotypes they want, such as fruit that lasts long when ripe so can be transported long distances and stored for a long time before being eaten, due to commercial requirements, and in fact often this results in relatively tasteless fruit that is suited specifically to the modern capitalist model. But we don’t all have those criteria - some of us prefer good taste, and are fine with variability.
Here’s a nice video explaining in the context of wheat, why it can be so very advantageous for a. crop to not be homogenous, why genetic variation is so very useful. I know this goes against the standard model of modern farming, but I think not only is this generally a more healthy way, but in particular in the current context of catastrophic rapid climate change:
Also, I get that for commercial production, it makes sense to want a stable variety, because of customers. I would guess that having 10 or 100 trees all the same means that you can supply consistent product at suitable scale. And if each tree had good but different fruit, that could be an issue. However, at the family or community level, that would need not be an issue.
I do not know much about fruit trees and I am sure you know a huge amount. But if I may be so bold as to make an assumption, I will guess that that is not the complete picture - that longevity may also depend on the genetics of the tree itself, even if grown from seed with no root stock. After all, people have been growing fruit trees from seed for many thousands of years all around the planet.
Another example - many people grow tomatoes using grafting, to gain disease resistance from the root stock. But many people have also created tomato varieties that instead gain their disease resistance from interspecial crosses, such as the Ph-2, Ph-3, and Ph-5 genes for late blight resistance from Solanum pimpinellifolium. Similarly, you can get late blight resistance and cold tolerance from crossing with Solanum habrochaites, or deep roots for tolerance of dry conditions from S. chilense, salt tolerance from S. galapagense, and so on. So, I would imagine that interspecial fruit tree crosses could be a useful avenue for acquiring traits that would otherwise be sought from grafting, in which case potentially one could make populations which could be propagated from seed and be well performing, whilst having the additional benefit of being adaptive.
Now I know that this is a harder path for fruit trees due to the time it takes for them to bear fruit. But it still seems a worthy endeavour, hence my asking if people have experience with growing any of these from seed.
Yes, that’s a big issue for potatoes also. And while tissue culture can solve that, I find great value in methods that do not require high levels of expertise or technology. Partly because I expect the climate catastrophe to lead to some extent of societal collapse, and severe global food crisis. So I think local sustainability is important.
Sure. But I see this as 2 different things. I wasn’t talking about adding more diversity. But… suppose someone has 5 varieties they’re propagating from cuttings. You can say they have ‘diversity’ in their orchard because they have 5 types. But the diversity is static, so there will be no evolution. On the other hand, if they have 5 varieties that are all crossing, over time there will be constant shuffling of all of the genepool, so the diversity is dynamic, and the population will be evolving, adapting to the environmental pressures (including the cultivation methods) and to the pressures of the owner of the orchard who will be selecting also based on their own criteria. So, due to the genetic diversity of the population, as the generations continue, the resulting population can become better and better at adapting to the soil, weather and disease conditions, and also genetically shift along with the changing climate. It’s easier to see with annuals like wheat as in that video I shared above, but the same should be true of fruit trees also, right? Just takes a longer-term view/intention.
Ah, I just looked up Malus sieversii, the ancestor of the domesticated apple, and found this which relates to what I was saying about using crossing for cold tolerance and disease resistance, and also supports what I was saying about the benefits of genetic variation within a crossing population:
These and other Malus species have been used in some recent breeding programmes to develop apples suitable for growing in harsh climates unsuitable for M. domestica, mainly for increased cold tolerance.[17] A study in 2020 has discovered various gene inserts involved in dormancy and cold resistance features, such as heat shock proteins, in wild apples.[15] In addition, desirable traits such as late flowering, early fruit maturity, short juvenility and stooling capability were studied by many breeding programs.[18]
Malus sieversii has recently been cultivated by the United States Agricultural Research Service, in hopes of finding genetic information of value in the breeding of the modern apple plant. Some, but not all, of the resulting trees show unusual disease resistance. The variation in their response to disease on an individual basis is, itself, a sign of how much more genetically diverse they are than their domesticated descendants. For instance, wild apples were found to have multiple blue mold resistant genes, specifically against Penicillium expansum.[19] The USDA Plant Genetic Resources Unit (PGRU) also conducted phenotypic analysis on M. sieversii seedlings, and has identified various pathogenic resistance including apple scab, fire blight, and cedar apple rust.[20] A research in 2001 found various insect resistances within M. sieversii seedlings, and has identified instances for further research on its resistance for apple maggots and apple leaf curling midges.[13] Effects of heat on M. sieversii were also studied in hot and arid regions, and they were found to be considerably drought tolerant and sunburn resistant.[13][21]
Well, yes that one genotype problem is what I mean by non-sexual propagation, but regarding from seed, could it have been that some varieties faired better than others? But yes there was a big bottleneck for potatoes, and tomatoes also, but that was exacerbated by the self compatibility of domesticated tomatoes and their very low rate of outcrossing (made even more extreme by the rather modern heirloom attitude of ‘purity’)attitude of ‘purity’) and the widespread use of few clonal populations of potatoes. Though now there’s so much diversity available from Andean potatoes, the world of TPS (true potato seed) is fascinating, and that is certainly the route I would take if wanting to make an adaptable potato population. I’m planning to start that next year.
Yes, sure, very valuable. Also would be great if they can be kept going on the land itself! For example there are so very many rice landraces in India, but in danger of being lost due to the multinational corporations pushing their seeds onto farmers there, giving them varieties that are worse nutritionally, dependent on horrific agricultural methods (fertilisers, pesticides etc.) and often more susceptible to extremes in climate, and often can’t be saved and planted the next year, pushing farmers into debt and causing huge suicide rates.
There is a small but increasing trend for farmers and even gardeners to grow older varieties, and also grow genetically diverse interbreeding crops - ‘evolutionary plant breeding’ or ‘modern landrace’ methods, for example. And one doesn’t need to be professional to do this. I think this is all quite natural for agricultural people to do, even if illiterate.
But by the sounds of it, nobody here has tried growing any of these interspecial fruit trees from seed… though if someone has and hasn’t spoken up yet, or has stories to tell about others who have, and how the fruits were (especially if grown from seeds resulting from a population of already delicious interspecial hybrid trees), I would be most interested to hear about it.
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Hi Justin.
I don’t think that anyone I can help you , due of the problem of genetic variability.
I can sow a seed of the Flavor Supreme pluot, and through the lottery of genetic variability I obtain a tree whose fruits have similar traits to the Flavor Supreme variety.
And therefore I tell you Justin, there is not much loss of genetic load, and it is a very valid method to multiply interspecifics.
And then you go and plant 100 seeds of Flavor Supreme, and as a result you do not obtain a single tree that offers quality fruit, whose fruits are very small in size and have an unpleasant taste (that is the lottery of genetics) and in that consists the work of the breeders.
Yes, I can tell you that the apricot is one of the fruit varieties, with the least loss of genetic load from seed, and the plum is one of the varieties with the greatest loss of genetic load from seed.
Everything else would be mere speculation.
Regards
Jose
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To me there is a single component of even trying to grow an unknown genetic fruit from seed: time.
Second is space.
Even though I am patient in general, though some of my posts here might indicate otherwise, at 60 years old I don’t want to wait 7, 8, 10 years even for the first fruit of the lottery generics of a tree grown from seed.
The next would be space. If I wanted to roll the evolutionary dice and grow out some interspecific seeds I’d want to do as many as I could to increase (ever so slightly) my chance at getting something worth eating.
That being said others have already and are already doing that work to us. So I will be content growing a few of those and grafting additional varieties on to those trees.
Much better use of time, space, and money.
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With annual crops like tomatoes where you have short generation times and relatively many progeny per pollination event, it’s doable. With fruit trees, there are time and land constraints that make this very difficult. “Stacking” traits like this very quickly involves screening and phenotyping many individuals. Many, many more if you are trying to breed for flavor and fruit characteristics at the same time and if the traits are quantitatively inherited. And for species like stone fruits where one pollination gives you only one offspring, you would also have to add in the time to make thousands of crosses by hand. A friend of mine worked in almond rootstock breeding, and one spring frost destroyed all of her crosses in a single day.
It’s not quite as easy. Most of our annual crops have become fairly genetically homozygous with minimal inbreeding depression. That isn’t the case for most of our fruit trees, especially those that require cross-pollination. If you keep crossing within the same population, eventually you will lose genetic diversity as any progeny with too many deleterious alleles dies out. And each generation would be a reshuffling of all alleles, good and bad. Think of the diversity in an F2 tomato population. Most fruit crops are far more heterozygous than even an F1 hybrid tomato. You would be playing the genetic lottery every time. You could also end up only with seedlings that are of the same gametophytic incompatibility genotype as one of the parents, and if you lose the other parent, none of your seedlings will be able to be pollinated. If you’re working with a crop that has separate male and female trees, often the males are random seedlings with no data on the impact they have on the fruit quality of their offspring.
For my PhD work, I evaluated 140 offspring from an intraspecific cross of two wine grapes. So not quite as much genetic diversity as you would have from an interspecific cross, but even then 140 is too small of a population size for the work I wanted to do. At the same time, the number of samples was barely manageable. We did learn that the inheritance of flavor compounds is anything but simple, however. A lot of flavor compounds exhibit transgressive segregation, which is where the offspring produce a compound at amounts exceeding the parents.
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Great thread.
One comment…nature’s way of producing genetic diversity requires places where any particular plant or tree is still left to it’s own.
No matter what plants / trees cross-pollinate on human controlled land, I’d say there are no seedlings growing out to be part of that diversity.
That’s a bit scarry I’d say.
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I do not mean to be rude by asking, but, how do you know this? From what I understand, you have no tried, right? And you have not mentioned knowing anyone who has tried. So is this just theory? You see, I am trying to find knowledge based on experience, on evidence.
One thing that strikes me as strange about this theory, is how the fruits would all be ‘very small’, if the parent has large fruits, and both species from the original cross are large fruited. In tomatoes at least, this does not happen - the hybrids have fruits of varying sized in between the size of the fruits of the two parents. I’ve never heard of the offspring being smaller than the parents, unless the parents are unstable (such as F1s) and themselves have smaller parents.
This term ‘genetic load’ is new to me. I looked it up and found it defined as:
the decrease in fitness of the average individual in a population due to the presence of deleterious genes or genotypes in the gene pool .
And:
The reduction in the mean fitness of the population. The genetic load in the population is caused by mutations and some environmental conditions.
And:
The average individual taken from a population with a low genetic load will generally, when grown in the same conditions, have more surviving offspring than the average individual from a population with a high genetic load.[1][2] Genetic load can also be seen as reduced fitness at the population level compared to what the population would have if all individuals had the reference high-fitness genotype.[3] High genetic load may put a population in danger of extinction.
So if I am understanding this right, loosing genetic load is a good thing. So you’re saying that apricots have one of “the least loss of genetic load from seed”, so presumably that means that they would increase in fitness if grown from seed relative to being grown from a cutting, but minimally, whereas plums would increase in fitness a lot, if grown from seed. Right?
So that makes it sound like a good idea to grow plums from seed. But, would I be right in assuming that there would be an even greater advantage in growing the hybrids from seed? Presumably, the main remedy for countering genetic load is widening the genepool, and interspecific hybrids would be an extreme example of exactly that, right? This for example is why making interspecific tomato hybrids is so important, since the heirloom tomato genepool is so restricted, having gone through 2 or 3 severe bottlenecks, the last of which being the importation of domestic tomatoes to Europe several centuries ago. The situation might be different now, since numerous breeders are integrating wild genes, but some time ago it was said anyway, that a single accession of a single population of one single self incompatible tomato species, would have more genetic variation than the entire world of heirloom tomatoes.
Yes, that makes sense, and I totally understand why most people would want to grow predictable grafted trees. I do also think that it’s great if some people are willing to do things that take more space and time though, if that leads to greater sustainability for the wider community for generations to come. I think the attitude of taking a long perspective is a little lacking in modern society, but I think it is probably more valuable now than ever.
Also, imagine if someone or some group of people did do the work to create a great population of fruit trees that could then be planted by anyone around the world in the right climate, and grown from seed to produce whole orchards of delicious, slightly varied fruit but with relatively stable phenotype, that could continue to be propagated by seed, for generations, and also adapt to the changing environmental conditions. That sounds good to me! It could benefit many communities, and cut out all the effort of growing extra trees for the rootstock, and the work of grafting.
Also out of interest, if you want to do it the grafting way, how long does it take to grow the rootstock, then do the graft, then wait for fruit, all from start to finish? And, is the root stock grown from seed, or started from a cutting?
Ah that must have been so disappointing! As for crossing, yes, I appreciate that does take time. I keep wondering if I may have misplaced some of my crossing tags, because I find it hard to believe I really made over 1,300 cross attempts this year. But, perhaps it is so! I just received more in the post. Many crosses failed, especially some of the difficult interspecial ones, but I processed the seeds of 103 different successful crosses so far, and there are more to go.
Also while the work is long and hard, I think the criteria can be more flexible for community oriented folk compared to commercial folk. I mean, like supermarkets can have criteria that are not relevant for local customers, like strange standardisation of size and shape. But yes, sure taste and environmental tolerance are crucial. I don’t think stability is crucial though. I think it’s ok to stabilise just a few phenotypic traits. Like squash for example, it’s fine if they have all similar taste and similar size (for oven cooking) but maybe different shapes and skin colours and leaves and so on, and survive well in a given area. So they can be a diverse landrace that serves customers well, even though they might never make it into supermarkets. I give this example from Joseph Lofthouse’s squashes. He and various others have similar attitudes to other crops too, and I like that. It leaves things open to greater genetic variation and therefore greater adaptability and fitness.
I wonder about that. For example, tomatoes. People talk about ‘hybrid vigour’ - the extra vigour occurring when two tomatoes that are sufficiently different from each other, are crossed. I do wonder if that term is dependent on the relative perspective, and if perhaps a more objective term might be ‘lack of genetic depression’. But, I am no expert so I refrain from settling on a definitive view on that.
Yes. With SI (self incompatible) tomato species, it’s recommended to grow minimum 75 plants and if indoors, collect pollen from all of them, mix it, and use it on all of them. This is said to be enough to keep the population healthy. Perhaps it is similar with fruit trees? I would imagine the problem would come if one would have a population too small. Or, even if you grow many, if you got the seeds from a small population, that would have already acted as a bottleneck so you’d need to bring in more genetics from another population to fix that.
Ah, yes, like in my example of the single SI tomato accession being more diverse than all the heirloom tomatoes in the world!
Well, the nature of that lottery depends though, right? For example, there are SI brassicas that we save seed from each year and the offspring are predictable. So it’s perfectly possible to stabilise phenotype traits of SI species, right?
Well also I should ask, are domesticated plums not stable in that way? Like, are there not varieties of plums which one could plant 20 seeds and most would be delicious? From what I understand they have been eaten since Neolithic times, it would surprise me if most wouldn’t be delicious. But I do not know. I have at least seemed to observe stability of phenotype in sloe populations as a child, for example.
Cool, sounds interesting work! Yes I heard about this in tomatoes where sometimes crossing S. lycopersicum with S. pimpinellifolium can give a hybrid that’s sweeter than either parents. Anyway, aside from subtle (though I am sure very important for your project) differences, to the average person I would assume all or almost all of the crosses were ‘delicious’ in the way grapes are usually experienced by folk?
I find the concept ‘left to it’s own’ interesting. I’m not sure I have that concept. Everything exists in an interconnected web. Also just to give you an example, I created 78 interspecific hybrids this year, growing out some of the F1s now and crossing many of them with each other also - some of the fruits now formed should have seeds with 6 species mixed, for example. I’ll be growing out seeds in the ground next year, where they will be tested by environmental conditions. There will also be a mammal exerting selection pressure - me, though some populations I will not even select for phenotype of fruit, only for disease resistance and ability to produce ripe fruit at all, for their first year. I’m also focusing on making higher outcrossing rates (through flower structure), and attempting to make at least one SI population - well, one looking promising, and another that’s just theory now and will take longer as I need to use a bridge species but I’m trying at least, hopefully the fruits now forming will give me enough viable seeds from enough plants to go to the next step with that.
Is that nature’s way? Well that all depends on whether I am considered a part of nature or not. The same goes for whether these new plants are considered “to be part of that diversity”. For me they are, because I don’t see a ‘this’ and ‘that’ there, just an ‘everything’. But perhaps more significant to me is that I want them to be able to flourish with as little input as possible - to be as weed-like as possible. Ideally, only to be watered when being planted. In future maybe even direct seeded, though I am in no rush for that. And no pesticides, herbicides or fertilisers. Ideally even no pruning, though again I cannot select for everything at once, but I have focused on parents with thick strong stems and relatively short in height, to help that from the start. If one does think in terms of nature being ‘other’ and us on a separated ‘human’ side, human ‘world’, then I suppose I am at least trying to break that down a little, because I feel the lower input we need for growing food, the less destruction we do environmentally. Plus, if crops are better adapted to lazy growing, I think it makes them more accessible, and I really would like to see more folk growing their own food, and being happy to do so.
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My comment about ‘left to it’s own’.
What I was trying to say is, even in managed orchards, seedlings are not allowed to grow. In a residential setting the same. I plant trees or graft them and no seeds from any open pollination that occurs is allowed to sprout and grows to maturity. I cut my grass, weed my beds, etc. The land is maintained by humans.
In a more rural setting you have a larger likelihood of seeds being distributed by animals and grow on the roadsides or in unmaintained land.
So as nature has done without us I mean without any human intervention in propagating certain varieties over others. Areas where a native tree reproduces and pressure selects certain offspring for survival as all living things do.
Let’s say I have two trees in my yard that have never been placed together anywhere else on earth. They cross pollinate and every single seed the pollinated fruit creates is it’s own genetic variation of its parents but all are new varieties from the parentage.
Without me being present, or any human influence, this would produce at least a few unique varieties and evolution would select survival as it does. Rinse and repeat.
But because I live in a residential area, not a single seed from those two trees is allowed to germinate and further diversify that fruit.
If that makes sense.
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Hello Justin
You should read all of Mr. Zaiger’s first-hand experience doing exactly what you’re asking about. Most of each of his advanced crosses were throwaway trash. Mr. Burbank burned the bulk of his seedlings each year calling it his $100,000 bonfire. That’s early 1900’s dollars value! I myself often used to plant seeds, including prunus, from advanced cultivars. Mostly expecting free rootstock, some of the worst fruit was usually from the seeds of very advanced selections. Just my observation, Good luck if you follow up on your experiment! 
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Hi Randy, that’s great, some reports of experience, thanks! Not sure what ‘advanced crosses’ means. Are we talking about F2 interspecial cross? Or later generations and backcrosses or…?
Interesting. That’s from interspecial plants or, what species? Again I don’t know what ‘advanced cultivar’ means. And, could you give any indication of proportion of… let’s say fruit children or average random people might like, vs. those they would not want to eat?
Also I wonder if there was a wild hybrid involved, like, if they had made the variety by crossing with a wild species or variety for disease resistance. Also wondering if you hand pollinated with something specific and known or if it was naturally pollinated and what consequence that might have had on the outcome?
Thanks!
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Damn!!! , I’m the stupidest guy in the entire world.
I have wasted half my life, thousands of euros on rootstocks, tools, and accessories, to have good fruit varieties in my orchard, when I could have had them in a year.
All you had to do was go to the supermarket, buy a few pieces of fruit and plant your seeds.
Damn, you could have warned me years ago how stupid I am.
Thank goodness I’ve already learned.
It’s fantastic, because we are in the late harvest peach campaign, first thing tomorrow morning I am going to buy some peaches, and stratify their seeds to plant them in a warm bed so that those very genuine varieties germinate quickly.
Justin, thank you a million for teaching me fruit growing.
Regards
Jose
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