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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Although there are a number of publications in the biology literature that claim such things, researchers in the mathematics literature have shown that the majority of computational methods provided in academic and commercial genomic software suffer from erroneous theories - and are producing faulty results.
http://geneticdistance.org/MisanalysisOverview.pdf
Not sure how hardcore or tangential your organization is willing go with this project, but I’ve been toying with a potential ‘retirement’ project for when I get to leave the rat race. One of the main commercial timber ebonies is Diospyros ebenum (which according to some literature studies are also hexaploid like kaki and virginiana). It is currently endangered and is an unsustainable timber source. I’ve been wanting to cross this species with some vigorous, timber forms of D. virginiana and do some embryo rescues (like the Ukrainians did with the kaki/virginiana hybrids). These hybrids could then be released (maybe with some minor breeding improvements) to hard hit rural farmsteads to generate a sustainable, domestic ebony timber source to plant in shelterbelts and windbreaks. The nice thing about this approach is that it doesn’t necessarily matter if the tree can mature its fruit; it only has to survive in good form to produce marketable timber.
My main problem has been sourcing ebenum seed - and when I do get it, I’ve had issues with quality and getting them to germinate.
That does add up , I would like to know for my own information more details, how much spacing for seedlings? what spacing of rows? I use 2.5 foot between trees and 18 between rows then thin to half or less but that is for full size trees. For a hardiness test could be much less both ways. Are you starting seed directly in place or in pots like I do. I have a system that results in near zero vacant locations in the orchard by planting one year seedlings. I start 2-10 times as many as i want then select only the strongest ones to set out.
I made the mistake of going to ebay and searching for “ceylon ebony”. I was treated to 2 pages of ads with women wearing bras and panties along with a few ads for ceylon ebony seed at very high prices. The relationship between Diospyros ebenum and D. Virgininiana is pretty far distant. I wonder if it is even possible to cross them.
I admit field planting would be easy with so many plants but pot growing then controlled freezing would be a possibility. I have some experience with that. An all out effort might be to try both methods. For hardiness testing The growing conditions are critical as it greatly affects the hardiness of the plant. Feeding heavily can speed growth but it reduces hardiness if taken too far and in this case testing for hardiness little feeding would be something to consider however depending on the facilities and equipment it also brings weed control into the picture as small trees are in the weeds.
Here is a plan , plant in pots , bare root and do controlled freezing, that way thousands of plants could be tested and only the most freeze tolerant planted out. With this method one could greatly reduce the cost of the project. About one thousand trees can be grown in a space about 5 feet wide and 50 feet long. Right now I have such a planting.
Followed by the reply:
In her thesis, Kanae Masuda does not introduce new genes involved with sex function in hexaploid Diospyros species. Instead, the analysis is concerned with the role of polyploidization in plant sex evolution.