Hybrid Persimmons Future Look Great

General Fruit Growing
1840

I do the have a 2 feet graft of David Pierce KYT he called Kentucky Thanksgiving. So far this winter the temperature dropped down to -4F. I hope the temp drop a bit more to test how cold this KYT can handle. Dax also gave me a seed of David Pierce hybrid persimmon called Twin. I guess the tree got 2 different fruit or something like that. I planted it and it took off to 3 feet this past spring. I also planted a seed of Jerry Lehman original Prok tree on his farm. That tree also took off nicely. Btw, thanks to Dax and David Pierce for all these new hybrid persimmon trees. I will also be busy the next few years collecting data on my own 20 plus hybrid persimmon of D.V crossed with Jerry Lehman cold hardy hybrid male 400-5 a seedling of Rossyanka.

Tony

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1841

You don’t have Early Santa ? I know that four of us received it. Dax named the people who received it, sometimes copying David Pierce. I think that Dax, in agreement with David Pierce, chose the varieties they sent based on the recipient.

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1842

In the spring I will do an inventory of all my persimmon trees to see if I have the Early Santa. I have around 60 or so hybrid persimmon trees that were grafted or planted from seeds. The Novost hybrid persimmon tree from Dax is growing well. I think it is from the Czech Republic and I am not sure the parentage of it. Btw Cliff and Joe sent me a bunch of hybrid persimmon seeds of Kasandra x God’'s Gift (Cliff) and Kasandra X Chocolate or Coffee cake or Taishu (Joe). JT-02 X Chocolate or Coffee cake or Taishu (Joe).This will be a mass planting of 50 seeds. Hopefully one of Joe JT-02 seeds will be a Nonastringent hybrid because JT-02 (Josephine X Taishu) back crossed to Taishu again. Fingers crossed. I also got 5 trees of Kujinaja X Rossyanka male (Cliff) in their second leaf.

Tony

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1844

Me too!

1845

This persimmon was sent from the Czech Republic, but it is not Czech.

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1846

Presuming they equated KSDS with infection by xylella fastidiosa, the presumed solution was to chill scionwood below 0F for some period of time. This is posted in a few places on the internet. Xylella infects the roots so if you don’t get rid of the infected roots, the problem will recur.

1848

Hey Steven,
regarding your Cardinal hybrid:

I do have a few of these that i got from you last year that i grew out and may give to a local friend/farmer to trial.
Here is your description:
“Using a hybrid male with some JT-02 in its lineage means there’s potential for these seeds to grow out into a non-astringent hybrid, which would be pretty awesome.”

is there a scientific way to calculate the % possibility that it could be non-astringent?
Maybe i remember seeing a post a year or 2 ago by @jrd51 on some calculation he made on a theoretical hybrid % chances of getting a non-astringent hybrid persimmon (think he recomennded a particular variety to use in a hybrid cross). @jrd51 was that you? Maybe you can link to reference that post here.

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1849
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1850

Thanks for finding that!
@jrd51 Is there any reason not to cross to another variety other than Taishu, like the non-astringent Korean variety Cardinal? or does it specifically have to be a japanese PCNA to get a higher %?

So you’d have
Cardinal : NonAstringent
X
(JT-02 X Male Rosseyanka Seedling) : (NonAstringent x ?)

and get both sides having some NonAstringency genes.
Would the percentage still be the same 5%?
Darn i only have 4-5 seedlings :).

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1851

I believe Cardinal is a Japanese PCNA in that it uses the Japanese genes and not the Chinese genes which operate differently

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1852

In addition, I think Taishu throws the occasional male flower, which enables you to use a pollen parent with known fruit quality. Presumably some of its progeny will produce male flowers as well. True males, while more reliable to use for crossing, can’t be evaluated for fruit traits, so you wouldn’t be able to predict what they will pass on to their offspring. They will also produce proportionally more male offspring.

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1853

Yes. Sex matters.

Taishu often has male flowers. Taishu was the male parent of JT-02.

My proposed cross would again use Taishu as the male parent. So it would be JT-02 (female) x Taishu (male), though any male-flowering PCNA would presumably work.

We can assume that JT-02 already has 3 non-astringent (NA) alleles (out of a total of 6) from its male parent, Taishu. When back-crossing JT-02 x Taishu, we’re expecting only ~5% of the gametes from JT-02 to have all 3 of these NA alleles. Meanwhile, 100% of the gametes from Taishu will have 3 NA alleles. So ~5% of the seedlings should be NA with 6 NA alleles.

Cardinal is a Japanese PCNA but it is female. The male parent is the "hybrid male seedling (JT-02 X Male Rosseyanka Seedling). We’d expect 100% of the gametes from Cardinal to have 3 NA alleles. So far, so good.

The question is: What about the male hybrid?

The male hybrid is a cross of JT-02 x Male Rosseyanka Seedling. We can assume that this male hybrid has 3 Astringent (A) alleles from its father, Male Rosseyanka. This hybrid may have received 0, 1, 2, or 3 NA alleles from its mother, JT-02. We can’t know the number, but there’s roughly a 95% chance that the gametes from this Male Rosseyanka hybrid have only 0, 1, or 2 NA alleles. But without the full set of 3 NA alleles, there is NO chance for an offspring of Cardinal x Hybrid Male to be NA.

On the other hand, there’s a ~5% chance that the genome of this JT-02 x Male Rosseyanka cross actually has 3 NA alleles. In these 5% of cases, there’d be a further 5% chance that the specific gamete used in the cross of Cardinal x (JT_02 x Male Rosseyanka Seedling) has 3 NA alleles.

Bottom line: It seems to me that to a 1st approximation, there is a 5% x 5% (i.e., 0.25% or 1/400) chance that an offspring of this cross is NA.

Note that the number of NA alleles in the JT-02 x Male Rosseyanka seedling parent is fixed. There’s a ~95% chance that the number of NA alleles is too few (0, 1, 2) to produce ANY non-astringent offspring, ever. But there’s a 5% chance that the seedling parent has 3 NA alleles. Only then would there be a further 5% (5% of 5%) chance that the seeds offered for sale can produce a NA seedling.

p.s. Yes, the OGW Cardinal is a Japanese PCNA Kaki. It is my belief that Cardinal is a synonym for the Japanese variety Soshu. Assuming my arithmetic’s right, Shoshu’s ancestry boils down to 3/8 Fuyu, 1/2 Okugosho, 1/8 Fukurogosho. Its mother is Izu, which is 1/2 Fuyu, 1/2 Okugosho.

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1854

Do those odds cut down even more to at least 50% less since the trees may not even be female fruiting to figure out if you got a NA in your result. (since at least 50% of all seedlings of American x American crosses i heard are male… not sure if that >50% also applies to this kinda of Hybrid x Asian cross).

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1855

I hadn’t thought of that (simple though it is), but I think you’re right.

That said, there may be a silver lining. I’m thinking this through now for the first time (and I’m no expert), so bear with me: Suppose the seedling that you grow turns out to be male. All is not lost, not by a long shot. We know that this male will have between 3 and 6 NA alleles – 3 from the mother Cardinal and 0-3 from the JT-02 x Rosseyanka father. If we use this male in a cross with any PCNA female, we’ll have much better odds of a PCNA offspring. For sure we’d get 3 NA alleles from the PCNA female. And specifically we’d have the following chances with the male:

5% scenario: 3 NA alleles in the male, then a 5% chance of PCNA offspring.
45% scenario: 4 NA alleles in the male, then a 20% chance of a PCNA offspring.
45% scenario: 5 NA alleles in the male, then a 50% chance of a PCNA offspring.
5% scenario: 6 NA alleles in the male, then a 100% chance of a PCNA offspring.

These four scenarios produce the following probabilities of a PCNA offspring: 5% x 5% = 0.25% + 45% x 20% = 9.00% + 45% x 50% = 22.50% + 5% x 100% = 5.00% = a cumulative 36.75%

So again to a first approximation, I think there’s roughly a 37% chance of a PCNA offspring in the next generation.

Bigger picture: This analysis suggests that successive crosses of PCNA females with males that were produced by prior crosses of PCNA females x hybrid males will gradually produce PCNA (6 NA allele) male hybrids. Basically, the PCNA females gradually add NA alleles to the hybrid genome. Whether such hybrids remain cold hardy is a separate question.

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1856

So I’m catching up on genetics and stats/combinations.
Sidenote: “Japanese non-astringent is recessive. Chinese non-astringent is dominant.”

So to be non-astringent (if no Chinese varieties are in play in the cross), the cross has to become “aaaaaa” (all recessive NA gene).
Taishu is a NA, so it already had “aaaaaa” across is 6 Hexaploids. it was crossed with an American (Josephine) which since American’s are almost always Astringent so lets say that is “AAAAAA” (same gene-marker/alelle at play sounds like vs another influencing gene?).
So when “aaaaaaa” x “AAAAAA” to create JT-02 Mikkusu, we can confidently assume it became: “aaaAAA”,
since the only possibility of the left-side gamete of cross is “aaa”,
and the only possibility on the right-side gamete of the cross is “AAA” so hence:
“aaa”+“AAA”=“aaaAAA”

So now you have JT-02 (“aaaAAA”) (which only makes female flowers).
and now you want to cross it with back with a male flower… and why not choose a male that also makes female NonAstringent fruit so you know it has “aaaaaa” across-the-board in the genetics.
so now for this new cross, you have “aaaAAA” x “aaaaaa” and hoping it becomes “aaaaaa”.

So the probability of that is combinations statistics…
on the left-side of the cross (JT-02 “aaaAAA”) you have (6 choose 3 combination) possibilities total
(6x5x4) / (3x2x1) = 20 total possiblities
and the chances of getting “aaa” is (from 3 a’s, pick 3 a’s) = (3 choose 3 combination) possibilities = (3x2x1) / (3x2x1) = 1 chance
so 1/20 = .05 (5%)

and for the right-side of the cross (Taishu “aaaaaa”), you still are having the same # of total possibilities (6 choose 3 combination) possibilities total:
(6x5x4) / (3x2x1) = 20 total possibilities

and you have a 100% chance to pick “aaa” gamete on that side (since no matter how many 3 rabbits you pull out of the “aaaaaa” hat, you always have 3 a’s).
so 20/20 = 1 (100%)

so you multiple them together to figure out the total odds:
.05 * 1 = .05 (5%)

then assume at least half are males where you can’t test if they have NA since no fruit, so the odds dip a little to pretend < 2.5% of whats testable for NA.

I’m gonna get my head wrapped around the Cardinal and ‘what if its a male’ stats you posted tomorrow as its 3am already here haha.

But maybe ill ask a followup question:
If you only need 1 gene of a Chinese NonAstringent to force non-astringency (since its a dominant gene in those varities vs Japanese which is recessive, is it correct to assume you’d only need 1 gene out of 6 to have that gene?), why not use that to build non-astringent hybrids? Are there no attempts to cross with Chinese NA yet?

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1857

I don’t know much about genetics but isn’t this where the Luo Tian Tian Shi comes to play because it has the dominant C-PCNA?

1858

Your discussion seems to perfectly reflect my own understanding, with one caveat and one minor exception. The caveat is that I’m no expert either on genetics generally or persimmon genetics specifically. This is a layman’s understanding.

The exception is that sorting of alleles into gametes may not be perfectly random, as assumed by the math for combinations (red balls, white balls). Alleles may be sticky; so when one NA allele separates into a gamete, it may drag other NA alleles with it. In actual breeding experiments crossing PCA and PCNA Kakis, the % PCNA offspring from the backcross is slightly higher than 5%. From memory, I think it’s closer to 7-8%.

Yeah, LMK what you think about the more recent post.

Re C-PCNAs: Yes, since the NA trait seems dominant in C-PCNAs, in theory a simple cross such as C-PCNA Kaki x PCA Hybrid should produce PCNA Hybrid offspring. I’m not 100% up to speed on progress to date but the fact that we haven’t heard reports of success suggests that the story may not be so simple. I seem to recall reading that there’s some fly in this ointment, but honestly I forget the details.

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1859

I wasn’t sure where to put this, but I figured this is as good as anywhere else.

Has anyone actually tasted Journey? If you did, was it particularly good or interesting or is the interest just that it is supposed to be so early?

I ask since I see many talking about it as if it is worth adding, and I do have it, but I can’t remember anyone ever saying they had actually tasted it and what their personal review is. I know Cliff has obviously tasted it and has commented, but I don’t think I’ve read any other members here actually tasting it.

Part of my question really comes from the early days of my interest in hybrids when everyone was very excited about JT-02 and it was the hot one to get. Fewer were interested in Kassandra and Zima Khurma even though those were available then as well. Now that they are all widespread and many more people tasted a variety of hybrids and found their preferences, I think most prefer Kassandra and Zima to JT-02. I understand the excitement around JT-02 for those in zone 5, but for those in 6+ who can grow others, I usually hear JT-02 isn’t as good. For me, I’m grafting over my JT-02 because it wasn’t exceptional in flavor and the texture was too watery compared to the other hybrids.

Anyway, is Journey really a proven variety, or just a flavor of the month (year) until enough people actually taste it and decide otherwise.

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Fruit growing knowledge, this forum, and AI
1860

I’ve never seen a review of Journey’s flavor.
I’ve only heard that it ripens very early.

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1861

You just over-leveled beyond what online forums are capable of. I know because I’m in a ton of health forums where people run from whatever is popular to whatever is popular without reviews of whether any work better than anything else.

As of right now I know of no reviews on this forum of the flavor of Journey Persimmon, Sunrise Ruby Goumi, Baby Shipova, or many Medlar varieties like OSU 9-20 (which allegedly can be eaten directly off the tree without waiting for bletting).

And you aren’t the first to ask if anyone has tasted it yet.

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