Pawpaws in 2022

Hey ya’ll,
Some have asked about out Ultra Select seedlings. One stands out this year. Pictures are below:

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Was at KSU last week and they asked me to sample and evaluate a number of new advanced selections. They have one they are probably going to release. It’s NEXT LEVEL! It’s blows away every single pawpaw variety I’ve had this year. KSU 1-4. Some might know KSU Chappell was once KSU 4-1. This is different. It’s 1-4.

Incredible texture like marshmallow, thick and rich and chewy. Super sweet and just amazing eating. Likely it’s the very best one out of KSU so far.



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My grandfather would be so excited to see everyone growing pawpaw now. He tried his entire life to get people interested in these fruits. He’s been gone a long time but the fruits are finally getting the recognition he wanted them to have. Pawpaw breeding will take off soon but shipping them may never be possible. My grandfather undoubtedly learned about them from his parents or grandparents.

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Nice. I hoped KSU release it so We are all can enjoy it.

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IMHO, 7-1 is better than 1-4. @marc5 have you tried both to be able to compare?

FYI for those curious, this is Kirk’s slide from 2015 on 1-4.

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Looks pretty, should be a winner.

I like mine about the consistency of a just-ripe banana muskmelon,
rather than the consistency of a custard…
but I might could be
won over by the right specimen.

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Anyone know why it’s taken KSU longer to release(if they do) 1-4 &/or 7-1? Chappell and Benson got released relatively quickly, but they are taking much longer with 1-4 & 7-1. This is not a question out of impatience, I’m just curious.

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Kirk has mentioned each has some negative qualities. KSU evaluates the same way Peterson did. They look at the entire form of the tree from seedling to decline. Most fruit breeders (such as in stone fruit or apples, etc…) take shortcuts and graft to a mature specimen.

7-1 has a slightly higher seed/flesh ratio I think and 1-4 has some susceptibility concerns if I remember correctly. You’ll have to check with Kirk or Sherri for the exact details.

The original 1-4 specimen was planted around 2005, I believe. When Kirk gave his presentation in 2015 on 1-4, it was already said to be 10+ years old. It’s quite old.

I still rather have more peaches. For late fruit, persimmon and jujubes are higher on my list. They don’t stink up the house.

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Glad to hear others on here are doing some interesting crosses. I started doing crosses this year myself with: Chappell x Shenandoah, Chappell x Mango, and Mango x Shenandoah.

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I imagine those will be some vigorous trees!

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If you’re doing hand crosses, you should graft a stick of SN-715 to play with.

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Jerry Lehman hybrids are Sam Norris-15.
What is special about #7 other than possibility of tetraploid ?
Neal Peterson said if a real tetraploid it probably won’t cross.
Are you attempting seedless triploids?

Blake Cothron’s book KSU HI-7-1 is 8oz to 12oz, 25°Brix, pungent Cherimoya/Banana & no bitterness.

There’s been no test on the ploidy level for the Sam Norris crosses. Neal said “probably” but we don’t know for sure. (We actually still don’t know a lot about pawpaws.)

Jerry used them to confer large fruit size. @KYnuttrees can jump in and correct me if I’m wrong, but if I remember correctly he told me when pollinated by SN-15, Jerry said you’d get larger fruit size. Technically, this would make it a great pollinator branch for those only growing one or two pawpaw trees and don’t care to thin. Conversely, the SN put out small bad fruit so if you’re not careful, you could just end up with only small bad fruit if you’re not careful about the original cultivar you’re trying to pollinate.

I’m not sure what is going on with the way the polyploid levels work in pawpaw (no one does as far as I am aware due to lack of research), because Jerry’s crosses using SN-15 are still fertile and produce viable seed. If they are triploid or something, there is something going with the way gametes development, etc… to conserve fertility and not have runaway increasing ploidy level.

I could have sworn that there was one pawpaw that was tested to be triploid or something by LSU, but I don’t remember the exact situation. I could just be mixing up the details with american persimmon though. Ron, Sherri, or Kirk would know far better than I would.

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I’m finding the response confusing too, especially if factual.
The pollination by Sam Norris-15 getting bigger fruits, is that just the hybrid offspring or are you implying “Super Gibberellin” transfer resulting in seed mommy having bigger fruits?
If it’s due to quantity of pollen transfer rather than quantity of pollen, then putting a branch of Prima 1216 in every tree could yield even bigger fruits?
@KYnuttrees please clarify.
Thanks

Why Prima? Along with Sunflower, the supposed self-fertiles… we don’t even know what makes them self fertile. There’s no reason to specifically suggest it’s ploidy level. Even if someone said it’s a triploid, research needs to be corroborated, which is why its usually two research papers by different research teams. For all we know it could be some upstream or downstream transcription element which encodes some random protein that requires like 6 recessive genes to be simultaneously expressed for self-fertile trait to be true.

SN-15 and or SN-7 could [likely] be completely different cases from Prima 1216 and sunflower. Hell, we still don’t even know for certain if Prima 1216 is a Sunflower seedling. That’s just the way some people tell the story.

TLDR. We don’t know a lot about pawpaws. We can only speculate barring more research.

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We don’t know why big fruits:
More pollen, pollen with more gibberellins, pollen with different gibberellins, a metabolite passed with gibberellins, a gibberellin solvent passed with gibberellins, or something else.
My uncle raised Honey Bees for 25 years.
It resulted in more fruit, bigger fruit & more aromatic fruit.
My money is on gibberellin concentration as the cause.
Kirk Pomper stated at this year’s pawpaw event that Prima 1216 was the only true self fertile pawpaw.
Sunflower is less self fertile than Susquehanna, it just has 3 times the blossoms.

@RNeal is it possible that Sam Norris treated seeds after embryo cell division started & that he ended up with both (Diploid & Tetraploid) meristem cells in the same plant???

Good point, but I don’t even think Kirk (or anyone else for that matter) knows why its self-fertile, like the exact mechanisms behind it. We are assuming it’s related to gibberellin or ploidy. It’s possible it’s for an entirely different reason, wherein its some other genetic component responsible, which is why I was postulating it could be a completely different situation from the Sam Norris ones.

Sadly, Jerry is no longer with us, I would love to pick his brain on this one.

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It could be blossoms with more “4-methyl-5-vinylthiazole” putrid stench to attract more flies!!!

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