are you talking about
-hardwood cutting
-softwood cuttings
-rooting suckers
-or just cloning (same genetics for roots as the top growth)
depending on how you define it, “cuttings” can be seen as many things.
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I have some neglected pawpaw seedlings around. This one had been haphazardly growing in a pot with multiple other seedlings. It had slumped over and grew laying on the soil. I probably didn’t even provide it very regular water in my arid climate. When I separated the seedlings and potted them up, I noticed this one had layered itself while lying sideways on the soil.
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@AaronN that is exactly the type of thing I would like to have going for a grafted cultivar. Unlike apples, cherries, pears, etc there is no “go-to” rootstock for pawpaws which helps to dwarf /provides disease resistance etc and as such, I expect any cultivar would be just as likely to do well on its own roots. Having a “stool bed” setup of suckers from a known cultivar would be beneficial for multiple purposes.
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That’s pretty darn cool. I do think the fact that it is a seedling helps a lot. Rooting or layering a named variety may be more difficult, though. If it’s matured enough to produce fruit, it may not be able to revert well enough for its tissues to be sufficiently flexible in what they become.
To compare with persimmons, Japanese researchers had best success rooting kaki cuttings that were taken from root suckers, which are in a more juvenile state. They got an own-rooted tree that produced suckers by tissue culture, which I believe took 72 iterations before it regained its juvenility to set roots!
So I think once you manage to get that first tree on its own roots, you should be able to root suckers from there. But getting that first own root tree might be a one in a thousand (or more) chance. Alternatively, if you have your own fantastic new seedling variety, that would by default be on its own roots.
Long story short, I hope people keep trying just because it’s intellectually satisfying. However, I think long term, grafting will remain the dominant means of propagation. It’s good enough, even with a relatively short lifespan.
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I am referring to hard or softwood cuttings, active or dormant.
That is, an above-ground piece of a branch or main trunk. not a sucker that has been dug up or a root section etc.
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4-8 years is a long time to wait for a tree that may only live to 15 though… I guess that is part of my motivation. If I knew I was getting a tree that had a vastly longer life span, I would even be ok with spending more on it.
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The hard part is getting the named variety on its own roots to begin with.
The example above from @AaronN is really cool but those roots are connected to an existing root system, whereas a cutting from a grafted portion of a named variety of course is not.
Agreed. I wonder if grafting lower, onto the root system itself instead of the trunk, is a method that has been explored with any degree of success. I guess with all things considered, there is also the challenge with a tap root growth habit too.
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I think grafting nurse roots on a cutting may be the way to go. Take a small section of root, graft it on in such a way as to make it easy to ID and remove later, and then treat it like a cutting from there.
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That is a method I hadn’t thought of that may work. I’ll add it to the list of things to try.
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Yeah, it’s on my to-do list as well. Just waiting for my persimmons and things to get far enough along that I can take some cuttings to play with. There’s a good detail on a couple different ways to graft a nurse root in Garner’s The Grafter’s Handbook.
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that’s the same as root grafting right?
I am curious though. I see you mention lifespans of 15 years? Why is it so short?
And how is that related to grafting? I suspect most pawpaw seedlings to be closely related genetically to the grafted varieties? i would not expect any graft incompatibility’s.
As I use the terms, nurse roots you intend to remove, whereas root grafting you make a permanent graft directly to roots.
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ah, thanks. clears it up. Makes sense for me now 
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I think that a lot of people in the industry would like that question to be addressed Oscar. For whatever reason, it is more likely for a grafted cultivar to die an early death compared to a seedling. It is my understanding that the rootstock will normally create new shoots which can be grafted onto if this happens.
I don’t know of many other fruits that suffer from a similar challenge, other than something like a dwarf apple tree on a known rootstock which has a much shorter life expectancy vs standard trees.
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Ufffffffff My God, I have a lot of work and very little free time.
Oscar, I have a lot of experience in plant and non-plant multiplication since mushrooms are not very well defined (they do not belong to the animal or plant kingdom), in culture media and sterilized substrates.
In my case all my life since I was a child I have been a “restless ass” (Spanish expression for people who are always thinking about something new project and carry it out).
More than 20 years ago I was growing saprophytic mushrooms in bags with sterilized substrates (then we did not have the information or the means available today), and once you gain experience there are good results.
Keep in mind that there were no mycelia for sale then like today.
Look this web :
So we had to get own mycelia, by sporation in distilled water of the saprophytic mushrooms that we liked the most for their qualities (large hat and small foot).
You should know that growing mushrooms from “0” (without buying anything doing it all at home) is infinitely more complicated due to contamination than in vitro propagation of a fruit tree from plant explants (this is much easier).
Also then we didn’t even know what a HEPA filter is hahahahahahaha.
And still we were successful.
I am not a biologist, but I have a lot of experience in this regard (by empirical science), so I can give you a lot of good advice to do this type of work “in an amateur plan”.
Fundamentally everything is based on asepsis and sterilization, since temperature and lighting are parameters that are totally easy to handle.
I do not know if this thread where it is about Asiminas would be the appropriate one to talk about these issues, we almost better look for a thread that deals with the cultivation of mushrooms and in that thread I tell you my experiences and give you my best advices.
This simple apparatus is “the mother of the lamb” (Spanish expression that denotes maximum importance)
- Express pot
Regards
Jose
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thanks for the response Jose.
If made my own mushroom spawn to. With a pressure cooker. And a “glove box” i disinfected with alcohol spray.
Do you know of the “cardboard sterilization trick” ? the mycelium grows faster trough cardboard than the contamination. So putting your contaminated mycelium between two pieces of cardboard and sealing the edges helps. After the mycelium grows through the cardboard, it’s usually “clean”
Have you seen paul stamets his book on gourmet mushrooms?
It’s basically my reference source for all things growing mushrooms.
I’m currently trying out “long term” storage of mycelium in distilled water.
I have some test tubes filled with only mycelium and water, and some with a piece of wood with the mycelium. They mycelium should go almost in stasis and should keep almost indefinitely, even at room temperature. Or at least that’s what i was told. And am trying to verify on a non scientific level.
i wasn’t sure though if plant growing media survived the 120 C of a pressure cooker. But it seems fine with that. Still for me, the largest challenge would be sourcing the growing media and plant growth regulators. Most stores that sell those need you to have a company or special papers.
Plant growth regulators here are treated the same as pesticides, they need to be approved on a product by product basis before they can be sold to the non professional public.
take IBA rooting powder for example.
So some manufacturers went to the licensing hassle and costs. So can sell to the public. Others did not, and those can only be sold to “professionals” even tough they contain the same active ingredient in the same concentration.
Since there is no large public demand for in vitro culture growth regulators. As far is i know none of the manufacturers went trough the hassle to be able to sell to the public. Most/all of their business is professional.
If you have an EU source that sells to the public, please PM me
Also I’m in the market for a really large decent quality pressure cooker. They are more rare in the EU compared to the US.
Something similar like Amazon.com: Presto 01781 23-Quart Pressure Canner and Cooker: Kitchen & Dining
Preferable even larger (23+ quarts or 20+ liter)
Cheapest thus far if seen them, is around 200 euro. VS the ~100$ they cost in the US -_-
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since I’m a bit of a pawpaw noob.
Does the same shortened life span also occur in own root tissue cultured tree’s? or has no-one tested that yet?
If “after death” the tree can be regrown/grafted from suckers. This would suggest to me, it’s the trunk that’s dying? not the roots?
Would it than not be useful to grow multi trunk pawpaw tree’s? And train up a new sucker every 5 years? and prune out the oldest trunk around 15 years, if it survived that long?
Seems like a waste to wait 5+ years for good fruit load, to than only have it last 10 years, before you have to start again 
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Hi Oscar.
If I know perfectly cardboard sterilization trick and I also have in my collection the book Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms (it is essential).
In my case, I have a hospitality business (2 restaurants and a hotel), so I have enormous pressure cookers.
If you are going to continue with the cultivation of mushrooms, it is very interesting to have a good large pressure cooker, but for plant multiplication by explants a large pot is not necessary, since you will only need to sterilize the culture medium.
The explants are cleaned by introducing them in a dilution of sodium hypochlorite whit destiated water (if you are interested I will send you information about the percentages to use of all the products per liter of water), and then they are cleaned in sterilized water before introducing them into the test tubes or plates of petri dishes where the culture medium has already been introduced under sterilized and aseptic conditions.
I have it extremely easy and comfortable, since the company that maintains the food health control of my company (INNOVA laboratories), are close friends of mine, so I can have all the material in your laboratory as if I were in my house (electric shaker, laminar flow hood, etc …), but I assure you that it can be done without laminar flow hood with enough success.
For the multiplication of invitro plants, one of the most important parameters is that the mother plant grows in the most aseptic conditions possible (if you do this you have half the battle won).
It is important to know that smaller explants grow whit less contaminated than larger ones in the culture medium, but smaller explants take much longer to root.
A small room very clean and without ventilation (exclusive for this type of work) sprayed with alcohol daily, and the day you go to work in it do the following.
- Fill several small containers with alcohol, distribute them around the room, add fire with a lighter to the containers with alcohol, and let them burn for at least 15 minutes.
After those 15 minutes, clean with alcohol on the stainless steel work surface and working under alcohol flames, you can carry out the work as if you were in a laminar flow hood , with little or no risk of contamination.
My mother, you are another crazy person like me hahahahahahaha
Regards
Jose
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i tend to thoroughly clean my shower and then work in there in a glovebox.
Haven’t had any contamination problems.
Still my biggest issue is getting the growing media and plant growth regulators. Where do you buy yours?
even though, a DIY laminair flow hood can be made for 200-300$. So maybe in a few year’s ill do that. Working in a glovebox (basically a plastic storage bin with gloves duct taped) is not that comfortable.