Hybrid Persimmons that are reportedly cold hardy

Kansas has both high heat, severe wind, and drought as part of regular weather. American persimmon and lotus grow well in somewhat protected areas here. Most of my persimmons i grow on the south side of a man made hill along on the water of my large pond. A single rain gives them 3 times or more the water since they are downhill as other plants. Leaf tatter is avoided by blocking the wind by hills or other trees. Kaki x american Hybrids will be harder if not impossible to grow here. Many hybrids sre now only 12% kaki like sophies gift. Since it is 4th generation it might have a chance. Iā€™m focusing most on what i know works for the moment. Once i address my needs of american persimmons for food then i will look at my wants of the hybrids. Iā€™m learning all i can about hybrids now. These hybrid persimmons look excellent and iā€™m very interested in them. I might plant a couple as tests this year. Iā€™m impressed with their reportedly large size and sweet taste. Iā€™m looking forward to trying them. Iā€™m going to change gears to hybrids as soon as i take care of the american persimmon project.

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@PaulinKansas6b ā€“

Thanks! Iā€™m really focusing on improved American cultivars in outside unprotected locations ā€“ next year Iā€™m going to try and graft/bud Early Golden, H63A, Prok, Yates, Mohler, and Barbaraā€™s Blush to go along with my Szukis I put in last year.

JT-02 is on my short list for a potted plant because Iā€™ve read itā€™s somewhat slow growing but also precocious.

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Does anyone on this forum know of a nursery that sells JT-02 persimmon trees? I think this cultivar would be a good match for my garden in southwestern Massachusetts (Zone 6A on the 2023 USDA Zones of Hardiness map. Any suggestions about other hybrid persimmons I might try would also be appreciated.

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That one might possibly be too late for you in WI, but it has otherwise been one of the most cold hardy for me in terms of avoiding winter tip burn that many other varieties can experience. -30F didnā€™t affect even the young wood if I can recall correctly. Several WS8-10 were the least damaged of all varieties.

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@TAC_MA ā€“ I donā€™t. Thatā€™s why I grafted my own. Would you consider that route? Youā€™d have to buy some DV seedling trees, acquire some scions from JT-02, then graft the scions to the rootstock trees. Itā€™s very doable ā€“ and very liberating.

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I used to graft apples when I got interested in heirloom apples a long time ago. What rootstocks are recommended for hybrid persimmons? D. virginiana?

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Yeah, in this part of the country we use D. Virginiana because it is cold hardy. D. Lotus is more common in CA and Asia.

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@TAC_MA

These persimmon trees can be very hard to come by. Iā€™ve never seen the trees for sale for more than a short while before they are sold out.

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Not sure if i asked in another thread, but do any of these hybrids have American flavor? My Saiju asian persimmon puts out 800 fruit, its sweet and Iā€™ve grown to respect that I can pick it unripe and not lose fruit to the animals (cause they hate eating it hard and astringent so i may only lose 30 fruit out of 800 to squirrels, and half of those i can cut off where they bit and dehydrate them to save the fruit). But the flavor doesnā€™t wow me over like an American persimmon.

Do any of these hybrids have that complex flavor, whether it be caramel/rum/butterscotch/apricot or some thing else? I will definitely graft a few this spring that Im getting from Cliff(and figbid), but curious about the flavor which will influence if iā€™ll graft them onto my trees or to give away to friends to trial out.

PS the specific varieties im getting are:

Zima khurma (NB-02),
Kasandra,
Mikkusu kaki Hybrid (JT-02):
Rosseyanka,
Chuchupaka

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@armyofda12mnkeys

This video is worth watching from above

The reason i bring it up is because he discussed Rosseyanka being the original cross of kaki x american so it is 50% kaki whereas nakitas gift the grandparent of sophies gift tastes nothing like kaki. @39thparallel and i ate a bunch of nakitas gift which tasted like a really good american. Finally sophies gift is 4th generation or 12% kaki. I have not tasted Rosseyanka or sophies gift. Have not tasted any of those on your list. The person who might know @OckooMicrofarm who made the video might have tasted these. @SMC_zone6 has been pretty busy but may have tried these also. @tonyOmahaz5 and Cliff might have tried them.

Zima khurma (NB-02),
Kasandra,
Mikkusu kaki Hybrid (JT-02):
Rosseyanka,
Chuchupaka

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I have been trying to grow kaki in Las Vegas, which is a good heat stress locale.

Two years in a row, I tried to grow Nikitaā€™s Gift and Giombo, and in both years, they couldnā€™t make it through July, even with conditions as ideal as I could make them (multiple timed watering / misting events per day, deep mulch, etc). They would start to look noticeably affected once temps hit 105, with growth ceasing, and once we started getting strings of days at 115, they just burned up.

I have a Fuyu that is clinging on gamely to life ā€“ it hasnā€™t been able to get over 8 feet tall ā€“ and it gets pretty well crisped in July every year, although it managed to produce a few fruit this year.

The exception is Saijo. It seems to almost like the heat, and is growing rapidly. It tends to stop growing by the middle of summer, but its leaves stay glossy and healthy-looking, and once the temperature decreases, growth picks back up.

Just as a point of comparison, my jujubes seem to be much more heat-loving than my persimmons. I also have fruit trees in Georgia, and the persimmons there are doing much better than the Vegas persimmons, but the Vegas jujubes look like they are years ahead of the Georgia jujubes.

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@marten

Thanks for sharing your experience which reminded me to mention something. I have a ā€œdryā€ climate, but nothing compared to Vegas. Most of my persimmon success has been from seed started trees. However, even there, as small seedlings, my best success has been on more rich soils where the ground can hold some moisture. There have been some locations where they really struggled (and didnā€™t survive) despite how much I watered them. Also, the baby seedlings, Iā€™ve protected with 2ā€™ trees tubes. Without those, 100F+ with very low humidity (sometimes very windy), and they would burn up. Once they grew above the tubes, they were fine. That was with straight D.V.

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Does anybody know more about parentage of Russian Beauty? Iā€™ve seen it as Roseeyanka x d Virginiana but havenā€™t seen it discussed a whole lot.

Apparently it (as well as Meader, though thatā€™s not much surprise) survived a -31.6F at Carandale farm. Unfortunately their uncommon fruit page hasnt been updated in a decade, Iā€™ll maybe check on this if Iā€™m out there this spring.

https://uncommonfruit.cias.wisc.edu/american-persimmon/

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Itā€™s Nikitaā€™s Gift backcrossed to kaki twice, correct? That makes it ~6.25% virginiana and ~93.75% kaki.

Im not sure offhand. if so thatā€™s remarkable its hardy, early, etc.

@kiwinut @hobilus @OckooMicrofarm

This video does a great job of explaining how it is 12%

Iā€™m watching this now. That reminds me I had a question about what ā€˜embryo rescueā€™ means. So they cross the flowers, they get seeds in the resulting fruit from the female-receiving specimen, they take the seed out of the fruit andddddā€¦ ???
its not very viable soooo, they need to ______ ???

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I donā€™t see it.

  1. Rosseyanka (Kaki x DV) is the great-grandmother (50% DK, 50% DV).
  2. Nikitaā€™s Gift (Kaki x Rossey2 Male) is grandmother (75% DK, 25% DV).
  3. Then there is another cross. The podcaster doesnā€™t say what. But if the parent is DK, then Sophieā€™s Gift would be 87.5% DK, 12.5% DV.

Do we know the parent? Assuming Kaki, then I agree it is remarkable if Sophieā€™s Gift is hardy to -20 F, as reported.

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@armyofda12mnkeys

Embryo rescue is describes here
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0304423805003298

"# Fruit set and embryo rescue in crosses using parthenocarpic ā€˜Mopanshiā€™ persimmon

Author links open overlay panelP. Leng a, H. Yamamura b

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Abstract

The ā€˜Mopanshiā€™ persimmon is a seedless, astringent parthenocarpic cultivar that does not produce male flowers. After pollination using four non-astringent cultivars (ā€˜Zenjimaruā€™, ā€˜Nishimurawaseā€™, ā€˜Okugoshoā€™ and ā€˜Hanagoshoā€™), seeds were produced to different degrees. ā€˜Mopanshiā€™ fruits pollinated with ā€˜Zenjimaruā€™ produced far more seeds than those pollinated with the other three cultivars. The ratio of abnormal seeds obtained from the fruits pollinated with ā€˜Hanagoshoā€™ was higher than that obtained from the fruits pollinated with the other three cultivars. Most embryos degenerated in the early to late stages of seed development. Immature embryos were cultured in a modified MS medium (half of NO3 in MS medium + 0.4 Ī¼M BA + 0.1 Ī¼M IBA) with the greatest success (52ā€“80%) from embryos taken from fruits 60ā€“80 days after pollination. Seedlings failed to initiate radicles so they were transferred to dark culture conditions for 8 days or to a rooting media that contained 3% sucrose and 1% Chinese ink. The seedlings on the medium darkened with ink rooted at greater than 90.83% compared to 75.83% for dark cultured seedlings. This study demonstrated that ā€˜Mopanshiā€™ persimmon could be used as a female parent in crosses, but embryos needed to be moved to tissue culture conditions to continue to develop and form plantlets.

Introduction

The persimmon (Diospyros kaki L. ā€˜Mopanshiā€™) originated in the Yangtze River valley. It has become the main cultivar in north China due to its superior quality, high production, frost hardiness and drought resistance. It is also the most prevalent astringent cultivar in China. This cultivar does not have male flowers and the fruits of it are large: the average weight is 250 g and a large fruit can be up to 450 g. It is an outstanding female parent source in the general cross-breeding of persimmon. During recent years, we have introduced some excellent non-astringent cultivars from Japan. But in north of China, these cultivars have got some problems such as they cannot become completely non-astringent during the ripening stage, their low temperature adaptabilities are poor and so on. So it is our aim through breeding to solve the problems of cultivar simplification and ripening periods concentricity. Hybridizing non-astringent cultivars with ā€˜Mopanshiā€™ persimmon as female parent could yield new cultivars of non-astringent or astringent persimmon with early ripening, large size fruit of superior quality and good resistance to frost and drought. Because of its parthenocarpic capacity, this cultivar can only be used as a female parent, but according to the discovery in the recent yearsā€™ cross-breeding practice, the high percentage of abnormal seeds during the growth of its hybrid seriously hampered the development of the research in cross-breeding.

The technique of embryo rescue could rescue abortive embryos to obtain hybrid seedlings (Bridgen, 1994, Iwamoto, 2001). The objectives of current study were to investigate embryo development in ā€˜Mopanshiā€™ persimmon pollinated by different non-astringent cultivars. The timing and conditions for embryo rescue in abortive seeds were also investigated.

Section snippets

Pollen source and pollination method

Fifteen ā€˜Mopanshiā€™ persimmon trees at a highly productive age planted at China Agricultural University were used. Pollen of ā€˜Zenjimaruā€™ and ā€˜Nishimurawaseā€™ was from the Research Institute of Pomology, Northwest Agriculture Technology University, and pollen of ā€˜Okugoshoā€™ and ā€˜Hanagoshoā€™ was from the China Agricultural University.

The flowering period of ā€˜Mopanshiā€™ was from May 14 to May 21 in 2003. Style abscission began on May 21. Because the fluorescence of the pollinated variety was 7ā€“10 days

Effect of pollination on fruit growth and seed set of ā€˜Mopanshiā€™ persimmon

There were no differences in growth between non-pollinated controls and pollinated ā€˜Mopanshiā€™ fruits. The average weight of fruits pollinated with ā€˜Zenjimaruā€™, ā€˜Nishimurawaseā€™, ā€˜Okugoshoā€™ and ā€˜Hanagoshoā€™ and harvested on October 10 were 230.0, 236.3, 228.4 and 231.1 g, respectively, compared to 232.1 g in non-pollinated control fruit (Fig. 1).

No seeds formed in the ā€˜Mopanshiā€™ fruits without pollination, but seeds did form in pollinated fruits (Table 1). The number of seeds per fruit was different

Discussion

ā€˜Mopanshiā€™ persimmon shows strong parthenocarpy and seeds are rarely produced. However, ā€˜Mopanshiā€™ could produce seeds after pollination with non-astringent persimmon pollen, but most of the seeds degenerated in the early or late growth stage. The degree of zygote embryo abortion in ā€˜Mopanshiā€™ was affected by the pollen parent. This appears to be correlated with the pollen parentā€™s ability to set seed (personal observation). There are numerous reasons for embryo degeneration (Kitajima et al.,

Acknowledgement

The paper has been supported by Beijing Natural Science Foundation (6052013).

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References (13)

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Production of nonaploid (2n = 9x) Japanese persimmon (Diospyros kaki) by pollination with unreduced (2n = 6x) pollen and embryo rescue culture

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Yearly fluctuation of abnormal embryo sacs observed in Japanese persimmon Diospyros kaki cv. ā€˜Nishimura waseā€™

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There were no clear differences for the ā€˜Kunxiang Seedlessā€™Ć—ā€˜Beibinghongā€™ cross among these three media combinations; however, the transformation rate of the ā€˜Flame Seedlessā€™Ć—ā€˜Muscat Hamburgā€™ cross on medium C was 40.91%, which was the highest among the three treatments (Fig. 5-D). Embryo rescue techniques are widely used by plant breeders, and have been used in many fruit crops to date, including apple (Dantas et al. 2006), banana (Uma et al. 2011), citrus (Xie et al. 2014), mango (Krishna and Singh 2007), muskmelon (NuƱez-Palenius et al. 2006), peach (Anderson et al. 2002), persimmon (Leng and Yamamura 2006; Hu et al. 2013), and watermelon (Taşkın et al. 2013), for purposes such as seedless breeding, triploid breeding, and interspecific breeding. Ramming and Emershad (1982) first obtained their new seedless grape cultivars from seedless female parents through embryo rescue, and this technique has been widely applied by plant breeders to rescue inherently weak, immature, and/or abortive embryos and to overcome the failure of endosperm development in interspecific, intergeneric, and interploid hybridizations (Zhu et al. 2013; Li et al. 2015; Yan et al. 2019).

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But plants deflasked in the middle of February 2019 were shown to be grown much healthier and stronger than those deflasked in the middle of December (Fig. 2Iā€“L). In vitro embryo rescue technique is widely explored and used to recover hybrid seedlings from crosses in systematic breeding, wherein the hybrid embryos are susceptible to abortion and difficult to produce seedlings, for example, for breeding of grape (Tang et al., 2009), persimmon (Leng and Yamamura, 2006), kiwifruit (Wu, 2012a), jujube (Ren et al., 2018), citrus (Xie et al., 2019), and early ripen cultivars of peach (Mancuso et al., 2002). Although several reports are available on embryo rescue of cherry (Deng et al., 2019; Li et al., 2004, 2014b; Xu et al., 2018; Zhao et al., 2008), the suitable rescue methodologies were still not available and the efficiency of embryo rescue still needed improvement (Xu et al., 2018).

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This in vitro technique consists of germinating and obtaining plantlets from immature embryos, grown in a defined nutrient medium under aseptic conditions (Cravero and Cointry, 2007). Since the first studies performed in Iris sp. (Randolph, 1945), it has been applied mainly to overcome postzygotic barriers in interespecific crosses in different species, including peppers (Ochatt et al., 2002; Hossain et al., 2003; Liu et al., 2004; Leng and Yamamura, 2006; Yoon et al., 2006; Cravero and Cointry, 2007; Bhattarai et al., 2009; Dagustu et al., 2010; Gebologlu et al., 2011; Wang et al., 2011). However, reports dealing with the shortening of breeding cycles are very scarce in vegetables, apart from very few studies in artichoke and tomato (Cravero and Cointry, 2007; Bhattarai et al., 2009; Gebologlu et al., 2011).

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2013, Scientia Horticulturae

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Thus, isolation and in vitro culture of zygotic embryos may be very helpful in both situations. This technique was first reported in two Cruciferae: Cochleira and Raphanus (Hannig, 1904) and since then it has been found very useful not only for shortening breeding cycles or enabling interspecific/intergeneric hybridizations, but also for overcoming seed dormancy or sterility, obtaining valuable haploid materials, or micropropagation, among other strategies (e.g. Tukey, 1933; Randolph, 1945; Kott and Kasha, 1985; Chen and Adachi, 1996; Acebedo et al., 1997; Lotfi et al., 2003; Leng and Yamamura, 2006; Tamaki et al., 2011; Tang et al., 2011). As a whole, the knowledge of the response of Capsicum zygotic embryos to in vitro culture is still relatively scarce, with the exception of very few reports.

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2023, Horticulturae"

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There is absolutely nothing in this video that implies anything about the percentage of kaki in Sophies Gift. He only states that Nikitaā€™s Gift is the grandparent and embryo rescue was used. According to @Harbin, ā€œŠšŠ¾Š»Š³Š¾ŃŠæŠ½Šøця is a mother parent of Dar Sofiyivkyā€¦ ŠšŠ¾Š»Š³Š¾ŃŠæŠ½Šøця is a direct offspring from Nikitaā€™s Gift backcrossed with monoecious kakiā€.

The seeds produced by ŠšŠ¾Š»Š³Š¾ŃŠæŠ½Šøця were underdeveloped, so embryo rescue was used to recover viable seedlings. The pollen parent of SG is unknown, as it was open pollinated. I have read that it was also kaki, but even if it was a pure virginiana, SG would still be >40% kaki. I think it is possible that the pollen parent was also a hybrid that added a little more D.v. hardiness into the mix, but until genetic markers are developed to sort it out, we really donā€™t know.

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