Curious why you can’t access Jerry Lehman’s orchard? Cliff England @KYnuttrees might be able to help make that happen.
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That should be a question to the family, I think, Steve. …I don’t want to come off as portraying rude, to you, not at all. That’s personal conjecture…
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Let’s not confuse markers with genes.
A marker is a short nucleotide primer sequence (15-25 amino acids long) which is annealed in a lab test with a longer segment of chromosomal DNA, producing a number of illuminations under fluorescent light or other means. Each illumination indicates a match to the chemically prominent acids in the primer. The number of illuminations is counted and then compared to known samples.
The main uses of markers are genetic ID and ancestry distance among cultivars. They are poorly correlated with characteristics of fruit, with the exception of bulk properties such as average fruit weight.
A gene is a specific sequence of amino acids with bonds to mineral elements. They are located within chromosomes at unique locations, plus a few more within a “back up” area. A single chromosome in fruit trees will contain on the order of 10,000 different genes.
For dioecious fruiting trees and perennial shrubs, the M/F sex is known to be controlled by the RAN001 gene in what is usually numbered the 1st chromosome. It is a simple switch based on a copper bond.
For species in which the RAN001 location is known, a skilled genetics lab can determine M/F for a few $100, provided they have enough customers to include the assay in their daily operations. Otherwise the cost will be a few $1000.
To my knowledge (or lack of knowledge), the gene(s) that stipulate monoecy in fruiting plants are still unknown.
For economically important crops, a number of genes have been identified for disease resistance/susceptibility, vitality, metabolism, etc. I believe that determination of genes that control flavor in specific species is still a ways off.
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Welcome to the forum! I am unable to help you with your quest but am very interested in your cause.
As to them not coming true from seed- Yes, of course. However, knowing at least one parent is extremely helpful in this work due to the eventual goal of predicting which parent combination will be the best for the next round of selection.
That’s great to hear about Nikita’s Gift x Prok that are hardy! We’ve only discussed sticking to the American genetics, but incorporating some OP seed form Nikita’s gift sounds fun!
If you haven’t already read it, I encourage you to go through this entire thread.
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I doubt it’s 2 (or 3) different species (of Diospyros virginiana)
Even today Distant Cannabis species are found to be one species (satvita Indica , ruderalis )
They are Variations of the same species
A different species needs to be divided by a certain amount of Chromosomes
(I have a Link if interested )
By the way I really Liked in the past (YEARS) reading your Blog
Great stuff on Natural Dwarfing tree’s by grafting , and Ugly apples (etc)
You forgot to mention the 30 chromosome ones in Florida
Here are some Persimmon in Lisle IL.
(70 miles away from Wisconsin boarder of Kenosha WI.)
(I’ve picked some by the road (for seed b/c by road) off bigger tree’s there )
Click on link
http://www.efloras.org/florataxon.aspx?flora_id=1&taxon_id=110299
Diospyros mosieri Small;
D. virginiana var. mosieri (Small) Sargent;
D. virginiana var. platycarpa Sargent;
D. virginiana var. pubescens
Click on E flora’s link
(I did do some additional research this was a while ago
I can get it (searching for PLATYCARPA probably in emails)
My apologies, I wrote this quickly yesterday and I’m not a plant breeder so I stumble on the specifics sometimes. We have an on-staff plant breeder who is currently working on genomic prediction of the American hazelnut at Wisconsin Madison. He has been using SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms) as the marker or choice to build his prediction models and as far as I know, he’s been able to uncover characteristics such as nut size as it relates to certain parents by using 3-5k molecular markers per tree (and each costs less than a penny). There’s a lot to say here and I won’t do it justice because I’m not a plant breeder, just the person putting this project together. I’m sure he’d be happy to talk with you.
Also, there was a great thesis/dissertation released this year in regards to narrowing down monoecious habits in hexaploid Diospyros. It really looks like they’re getting there, which is exciting.
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I looked for years trying to find persimmons that would survive and produce fruit north of Madison, WI. I did not succeed. There were/are producing trees in the UW Arboretum, but being close to a large lake (Mendota) and in an urban environment kept winters less harsh. Many years the fruit wouldn’t fully ripen even there.
Good luck, I’d love to be able to grow persimmons in central MN (really doubt it’s possible though)
HudsonAlpha will be performing the sequencing. I believe the long-read sequencing will be performed by PacBio.
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We’ve got a test planting of 20+ pounds of persimmon seed in the ground now in Spring Green to make sure we’re not going to have total failure there. However, as a safe-guard, we are also planning to grow in Illinois.
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Very cool. I used to communicate with a guy near Spring Green who did have producing persimmons.
This is wonderful news! We are tree people, so damage is something we’re very aware of.
As to why so much seed:
We’re shooting for ~1500 as cold hardy as possible females in this trial (and we’ve yet to determine how many males). There’s not a ton of info that I’ve been able to find regarding survival rates in cold climates, but Buzz Fervor used to say that 1 in 100 are very hardy (not experiencing fall or winter die-back) to zone 4a and Meader planted 250 seeds and only one survived. In doing the reverse math, we’d need 300k seeds for this, but that’s just too much. So we’ve lessened our hardiness goals and instead of shooting for antifreeze-level-hardiness, we’re hoping for 1 in 50 to show enough hardiness that we can start to understand it from a parentage perspective. At those rates, we need over 100k seeds, which is why I’m searching for loads of fruit.
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This is a great idea! I’ll noodle on it a bit, with hopes that I’ll see Linda Grimo at NNGA next week.
We’re looking for LOADS of seed. But even getting small lots of seed from Grimo would be worth it. I’ll be in touch!
Great idea. I’ll get in touch with Kathy and Tom.
This is great advice! I believe Jerry Lehman told me about Lena (I could be misremembering this) and how seedlings from Lena seemed to grow true-er from seed and were all early harvest. I’ll dig a bit deeper, as I do have a lot of data from Jerry (I was allowed to copy his hard drive).
I also saw an old essay from Jerry about Morris Burton containing a kaki allele. In the essay, he said that UC Davis did the work and named the researcher, but there’s never been a researcher there by that name. I’ve tried and tried to track down that info, so I’ll get in touch with @jrd51 !
I’ve not been to John Gordon’s, but I’ve heard his property has really good looking producing persimmons still there. That’s a good point that I had forgotten about and will look into it a bit more.
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Yep! It is crazy to me that Diospyros virginiana is so utterly understudied given its time on this continent. I have the archive of JC McDaniels, who seemingly was the last academic to take up Diospyros in the US, and what he was speculating but couldn’t prove is now totally doable with the tools we have today.
SNPs are used to discover DNA locations where characteristics of tissues from a physical location on an organism are coding from. So for example, your researcher has identified DNA locations related to nuts and narrowed them down to a few thousand that correlate with nut size. Follow-on work could lead to a set of about 100 RAPD markers which would be used in PCR lab tests as described above.