Hypocotyl Grafting on American Pawpaw?

General Fruit Growing
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Hi everyone I’m planning an experiment for the upcoming season and wanted to see if the community has any direct experience or insights.

I have access to hundreds of stratifying pawpaw (Asimina triloba) seeds and some scion wood from selected cultivars. I’m intrigued by the idea of hypocotyl (or very early epicotyl) grafting on pawpaw seedlings, similar to how it has been done on chestnut cultivars for a while now with massive success.

(Why I’m even considering this)

  • Pawpaws have a large, vigorous seed and a thick, fleshy hypocotyl/epicotyl—similar in morphology to chestnuts and pecans from what i’ve seen, where early seedling grafting is a known technique.
  • Theoretically, this could accelerate breeding programs by grafting a mature scion onto a seedling rootstock, potentially shortening the juvenile phase and cloning cultivars more rapidly.
  • While bark inlay, whip & tongue, and chip budding are the established norms for pawpaw, I haven’t found any documented attempts or tutorials for grafting pawpaw at this very young seedling stage.

My main questions for any textbook geeks who may be able to help, I would greatly appreciate it!:

  1. Has anyone here tried grafting pawpaws at the hypocotyl or very young seedling stage? If so, what were your results?
  2. Are there any known resources, research papers, or old nursery manuals that mention this technique for pawpaw?
  3. For those skilled in pawpaw propagation, what potential pitfalls do you foresee? (e.g., the fleshy stem being too soft, issues with callusing, managing humidity for such a tender graft).

I will be trying this myself and documenting the process. I’m happy to share my results back with the forum, whether they are successful or instructive failures!

Thanks to everyone in advance.

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This sounds very exciting! I hope you do try it!

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I’ve only grown a few seedlings, but they usually get extremely unhappy if you disturb their root whatsoever and stop growing for the season in my limited (3 seedlings) experience.

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u will need some special tap or plastic wrap to fixate grafting juction.
seedling are softer and thinner normal grafting tape may be too rough on them.

plastic straw and plastic wrap are used in tomato hypocotyl graafting.
and i personally use parafim wax to do my cactus hypocotyl graft.

and be careful about air humidty. scion may die to dehydraction is it is too dry.
a bag over head nay be needed. but it depend on case.

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Thank you! I was planning on using an elastic band and a big ziplock to dome the entire area, similar to this video here with juvenile chestnuts. I have also dealt with pawpaw seedlings before and have seen they can get pretty tough stem wise, so i’m hopeful! : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVNcd2xeGOc

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This is a neat idea, but id say chesnuts and even walnuts have a much larger energy reserve than pawpaw seeds. Worth trying for sure, but Im not sure that it really presents any benefit from a breeding perspective.
If youre wanting to produce nursery stock it might have some benefit if you can get it to work.

If you graft a branch on a flowering age tree, with a scion of a cultivar(or flowering age selection) the graft will make flower buds for the following spring. Makes getting new selections going as pollen parents pretty quick.

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@TrilobaTracker has a post where they started seeds in November and grafted in the spring.

Maybe they might have some advice.

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