Those are your tetraploids right? Mine tasted pretty good, without the odd aftertaste of the pops
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Exciting work. Keep us posted with your results (and now you can post again)
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First ripe passion fruit of the year. A wet mid summer prevented a lot of the earlier flowers from setting fruit, but eventually it dried out a bit and about a hundred fruit set on my four in ground tetraploid hybrid passion fruit.
Went ahead and ate it today. Good flavor and plenty juicy, forgot to weight it. Having just ripened, it was sweet tart. After a few weeks on the counter it would have been nice and sweet, but even still it was plenty sweet enough to eat out of hand. A little aromatic and with good passion fruit flavor. Looking forward to the rest of them!
These vines are mostly P. cincinnata with some incarnata and a little edulis in them. The fruit taste good, are decent size, and have pretty good pulp to seed ratios. Shelf life is very good, I’ve kept some for months, and sweetness vs acidity is good compared to regular edulis. Next year I should be about to do some direct comparisons with a selection of pure incarnata that’s supposed to be a good one. I collected some wild incarnata this year to do a comparison but had to toss the fruit as some of them spoiled and the others had a really strong off flavor.
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Alright, I can confirm that if well-established Lady Margaret and Fata Confetto are both hardy in zone 8. Fata Confetto seems to have handled it better overall but both survived a wicked winter with extended hard freezing and a low of 10 F.
Lady Margaret
Fata Confetto
And a sucker from Fata Confetto already forming flower buds
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I read your post last night and went out and observed the same problem this morning! Needs a mating pair to pollinate I guess lol. Also- am I seeing correctly that there is no pollen on the second photo flower?
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Yeah doesn’t look like any pollen. What variety is that?
Haha true
The female parts do droop down a bit as they mature. I think for me bees are actually pretty decent pollinators at that point, thought hummingbirds are probably still better when they’re around. Still, even with pollination the plants are reluctant to fruit initially.
First is DKxBitop, second is Timbo seedling.
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Ok. My Timbo hasn’t flowered yet, I’ll have an eye out to see what kind of pollen it has or doesn’t.
I have a maypop from OGW (Maypop Passionflower Perennial Vine - One Green World). Planted it in a pot this spring. Lots of lovely flowers, no fruit. Do I just need to wait, or am I doing something wrong?
If you live in their native area, try nabbing a few flowers from wild plants and hand pollinating. If those flowers set fruit, you know it’s a pollination issue and you need a friend. Mine also seem like they won’t set fruit if they are water stressed (growing in large pots).