Those are your tetraploids right? Mine tasted pretty good, without the odd aftertaste of the pops
1 Like
Yes, these are the tetraploid hybrids.
Unfortunately, the red colored one had a bit of damage on the back and it spoiled as it ripened. But that aside, yeah I like the flavor and sweetness of these things. They’re not as aromatic as I’d like, but other than that they’re very good passion fruits.
4 Likes
Have a picture of the insides you can post?
I didn’t take any pictures of these ones, no. But I can post pictures of previous fruits from the same vine. They have a decent pulp ratio and a yellowish color. When fully ripe, they’re very similar to the native passion fruit but much sweeter and less sour.
6 Likes
Lots of reddish colors on them this year, perhaps from the cold.
Frost tomorrow, so I picked everything still on the vines that looked big enough to ripen indoors. About 50 fruits.
I had one of the ones that fell off early that I ripened indoors the other day. Decent flavor, a bit of tartness but still balanced enough to be good. Not as good as summer ripened fruits though.
4 Likes
From my experience, they don’t ripen indoors. But I’ve only grown purple possum, red rover, Frederick so the may pop may act differently. Like, the fruit shell dessicates a little but the flavor doesn’t change like it would on the vine 
I’ve had decent results ripening indoors. If edulis doesn’t do well then it’s probably the incarnata parentage these have that helps.
Maaaaaaybe cincinnata, but these don’t have all that much cincinnata in them, they’re majority incarnata.
1 Like
Today’s batch.
I still pick out the occasional bad fruit. Today I had to toss two of them for example. However, the ratio of spoiled fruit to ripe fruit of getting better. I think all the fruit that had damage have largely all already spoiled, leaving just the good ones to continue ripening.
Flavor is good, sweetness is good, and residual acidity is about where I want it with most fruit being tangy but not sour. Despite the drier winter air, the fruit are juicy and pulpy. Pollination seems to have been very good because all fruit are well filled. Overall fruit quality is better in summer but these are still good.
I’m liking the storage life. One month after harvest and I’m getting lots of ripe ones, with plenty of green ones still to ripen too. They’re just in a basket on the counter and have done fine, even the spoiled ones don’t make a big mess quickly so I have plenty of time to spot them and remove them. Looks like the pith is what loses most of the water as they shrivel during storage while the pulp stays nice and juicy.
6 Likes
Second year in a row, this passion fruit appears to be at least partially self-fertile.
This is a root sucker of the original plant which I potted up to give to a sibling. It flowered in isolation. The fruit is small and may still abort, but normally at this stage if they’re still green they’ve been fertilized.
I know these crosses have some edulis in them, and some edulis cultivars are self-fertile, so that may be where the trait is coming from. Or it might just be a consequence of the higher ploidy or the complex crosses have resulted in the inactivation of the self-incompatibility gene(s). Regardless, as best I can tell so far, without especially rigorous studies but still, at least one of the tetraploid hybrid passion fruit I grow is partially self-fertile.
I’ll probably keep selecting for that trait. It does make breeding a little more work because I have to castrate and isolate the flowers so they don’t self, but for passion fruit the flowers are enormous so it’s pretty easy to do that. Castrating hot peppers or kumquat on the other hand…
I’ll be backcrossing these hybrids with an improved incarnata for better cold tolerance. Hopefully it’ll also give me earlier growth as some of these hybrids really don’t get going until summer heat sets in. I’m looking to also try and work in some tucumensis genetics and, in some other breeding lines, I want to play around with some flavicarpa, coccinea and alata additions, though I’m less sure those will work.
Also, someone should comment something below because otherwise I can’t add new posts. The last three in a row have been mine and the platform won’t let you post more than three in a row.
6 Likes
Exciting work. Keep us posted with your results (and now you can post again)
1 Like