Also, there is a PA nut grower Don Jackson who grows Josephine. He got it from Miles Nolt who got it from Hershey. Jackson lives 20 mins from me. I will have to confirm his tree is the same as Fruit Dump.
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I love those old USDA chromolithographs. Years ago I hunted down all of the ones with D. virginiana in them and had them framed.
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An interesting thing about that Josephine lithograph is that the isolated seed provided for reference doesnât appear to match the seed shapes in the sliced fruit. In my experience, the seed shapes for my cultivars are remarkably consistent. I can pick some of them out of a pile of mixed seed based on shape, thickness, size, and coloration alone. Cultivars like Prok, Ruby, and some others have very distinctive seeds.
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You are a true persimmon fanatic!!!
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While I greatly appreciate the education and discourse above to learn more about our current understanding of genetics and how it might improve our understanding of the questions in my original post, I likewise appreciate you and @carya sharing your knowledge and research.
@parkwaydrive I would be very interested in scion for this one if you have it, and @carya do you know if Don Jackson is in the business of sharing genetics? Iâm in PA but havenât gotten involved in the Nut Growers Association yet, it seems like they primarily operate and hold events a few hours from my location.
surely some advancements on plant genetics have occured in the past 23 years. genomic sequencing was in in its infancy in 2003.
ive seen you say this a few times and im curious why you think thats the case still, I am far from an expert that date on the side just stood out to me
Edit: I didnt realize this convo kept going disregard
fascinating, have you tried contacting them for scionwood?
@disc4tw
Here is the beginning of parkwaydriveâs post: âIâve been searching for the Josephine for over 20 years now, so this is a topic of interest to me.â
Horticultural genetic markers involve chemical assay, not sequencing.
This open access article might be of interest to you: PCR past, present and future.
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Iâm going to step aside from the overall discussion and state that we need a whole new range of genetic tools. The last 15 years have been revolutionary after discovery of crispr which permits âwritingâ DNA. Now we need a similar advance in methods to âreadâ DNA. The way it is done today does not give the resolution needed except in fairly simple genomes and even then only with a massive sequencing effort. I might disagree with Richardâs overall take, but at the same time, it is very obvious that we canât read DNA like we would pick up and read a book.
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My âtakeâ has been about horticultural genetics, except here: âIn more robust sciences, the amplicons are sequenced to examine their contents.â
Exactly.
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Yes, he and everyone else involved in PNGA is pretty open about sharing material, but a lot of them are older folks so itâs a âu-pickâ scion situation. Iâm happy to cut some sticks of Jacksonâs Josephine and mail to you.
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I donât have scion for this one, but I ordered some from here a week or so ago that I think is it.
My understanding was assay is used after sequencing several samples and checked avainst those sequences. No? As I said I am not remotely in this field so this may be well off. My understanding comes from how dog genetic testing works
Dogs have a simple diploid genome. American persimmon is either tetraploid or hexaploid. Complexity goes up exponentially as the genome size increases. I shudder to think what it will take to sequence black mulberry.
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I been skimming this thread⌠sorry if I missed somethingâŚ
I thought people have been saying that American persimmon DNA is too complicated to read/analyze (since itâs mostly hexaploid 6n and genetic testing isnt good enough yet to analyze it).
But @carya you mentioned that there was some recent genetic testing to identify that McKenzie Corner is the same as Early Golden.
What can the genetic testing currently identify in persimmon?
The general public confuses genetic markers with genetic sequencing. The majority of genetic markers in use today (including dogs) existed before genetic sequencing hardware was available. Your statement reflects this. The reality is that these markers (called microsatellites) were developed by extrapolation, having testing them on specimens (e.g. dogs) with known breeding differences and then assuming the markers apply to the entire population of the species or genus. The reality is that the statistical error in this approach with microsatellites is greater than the number of specimens â unless the chemical byproducts produced by the markers are sequenced or verified by additional chemistry tests. The latter is what occurs in COVID tests, and also robust sciences such as paleogenetic studies of hominins. It does not occur in horticulture.
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Just FYI, if something is intentionally created itâs called a product. A âbyproductâ just happens to be created along with the desired product, such as CO2 in the case of oxidizing long hydrocarbon chains to run an automobile where the product is kinetic energy.
In PCR, the product is fragments of DNA.
Looks like this would be the âIowa Arboretum Southâ variety. I wonder if anybody else on the forum already has it growing & fruiting.
EDIT: search results came up empty 
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Just visually its so unique I hope more start to grow it. Maybe ill graft it on in a few years when mine grows oht
Good to know. I placed an order from Red Fern but you beat me to this one! I grabbed Jennyâs Early, Wapello Female, and Lena.