Hi all! I introduced myself a few months ago, but I am a tree crop breeder with the Savanna Institute focusing on breeding American persimmon for silvopasture and human consumption. I am nearly at the end of my first season getting to know this wonderful fruit, and I have many, many questions that I think you all who have more years of experience with this tree may be able to answer.
I am also happy to talk about my work with persimmon breeding, our breeding program objectives, our plans for DNA sequencing, etc.
Questions I have so far (more to come!):
If you pick American persimmons off the tree, do you find that they will lose astringency sitting on the countertop or in the fridge for a few days? Or do they retain their astringency?
There are conflicting reports in the scientific literature about whether astringency returns with cooking/heating in Asian persimmon. Do you ever find that astringency returns in American persimmon products that are cooked/baked? Does this vary by variety/tree?
If you freeze pulp from fruit that is still astringent, does freezing affect the astringency at all?
If you collect fruit off the ground for pulping/baking/brewing, how do you avoid mold or spoilage? (Especially for brewing, which I want to try this fall.)
If you have seedlings (i.e. not grafted cultivars), do you observe differences between trees in whether ripe fruit tends to drop or be retained on the tree?
Looking forward to this discussion! I hope everyoneās having a good fall season so far.
I find astringency is generally eliminated in counter ripening. Spoilage isnāt really much of an issue. They keep at room temperature for a week or more. Ive not done much cooking, but no, I donāt believe cooking causes an increase in astringency where it has already been eliminated. Nor does freezing cause an increase in astringency.
thanks, chief. still havenāt sorted things out. season is lost, no idea how my plants are doing, but Im doing OK. Ive not had much time or desire to talk fruit, but I do miss participating, so its good to be back
It probably goes without saying, but you might consider starting with the breeding work of McDaniel, Hershey, Claypool, Lehman, and Compton. I imagine your breeding objectives might be somewhat different, but there are definitely some giants to stand on already. I believe all of their work is somewhat in peril, though a good portion has been preserved among collectors. Out of curiosity, what specifically do you imagine breeding for, and whats your breeding program more or less consist of? Hope Im not prying too much. Iāve followed the work of the Savannah Institute some. Glad to hear persimmon is getting some love.
My only experience is with wild americans so farā¦ i have 7-8 trees that I harvest from.
If you harvest them a little soft and orangeā¦
I normally give them 5-7 days on the counter and they fully ripen with no astringency.
I mostly eat them feshā¦ but have tried dehydrating some fruit leatherā¦ and cooking (8 minute simmer) making low sugar persimmon jamā¦
In both cases where the pulp was heatedā¦ i did not experience astringency coming backā¦ but I did experience a serious loss of persimmon flavor.
I have not tried just freezing pulp yetā¦ or whole persimmonsā¦ but do know that some varieties hold their flavor better thru freezing (morris burton) and some varieties do not.
I have several american and hybrids growing hereā¦ grafted to my own wild dv rootstockā¦ some in year 2 and some in year 1.
I also have a couple of asiansā¦ IKKJiro, Cardinal.
Iām not sure if itās a good idea. I mean we donāt know how the continuous inbreeding will work in american persimmon. If you look at the parentage of different selected seedlings they are highly related to EG. Garretson and Killen could be from selfing of EG, William (male used by McDaniel) is likly a seedling of EG with wild male. Basing on this each male from Claypool work was 75% EG. Lehman work was based on Clapool genotypes and if Iām right we donāt know the parentage for them, same goes for Campton. By the way Hershey donāt do any breeding work with persimmons, trees from his orchard are random seedlings and survivors from his offer like EG, Garretson, etc. I plant to start my own breeding work and to be honest I think the best option would be selecting in F1 female with male flowers (from crosses EG/Killen/Garretson x wild female). Then you could freely cross between them , also adding Szukis would be a reasonable (dwarfing gene, also 50% EG).
We are on it! We have tens of thousands of seedlings from known parents in the Compton orchard planted in 2022 that I am beginning to sort through for early vigor characteristics, and grafted cultivars from McDaniel, Hershey, Claypool, Lehman, and Compton earlier this year to go into the ground next year.
A lot of our breeding objectives at this point apply to both silvopasture and human consumption and are pretty basic: larger fruit, seedless fruit, non-astringent fruit (if possible), and fruit that will ripen before first frost in the Upper Midwest. Beyond that we get into dropping vs holding on to ripe fruit (silvopasture we want to drop, human consumption we donāt), increasing fruit firmness, looking at genetic resistance/tolerance to various diseases, and much more.
And no worries about prying! Part of what I love about working at Savanna is that I can tell people about the cool stuff weāre working on, because the end goal is to disseminate knowledge to enable more people to get into perennial ag.
We are definitely anticipating and trying to avoid inbreeding depression. I think it was Claypool who did some basic experiments with inbreeding and he found that it only takes a few generations for inbreeding depression to show up in the form of small, unhealthy trees, small fruit, etc. This is a common phenomenon in polyploid plant species, i.e. species that have more than 2 copies of their genome, so it makes sense that it shows up in only a few generations.
We are doing some DNA sequencing of established cultivars (including most of the ones you named) this fall to get a better idea of how much relatedness there is between these well-known cultivars and how we can maximize diversity in our crosses.
He has some notes, and a lot of what we collected from his orchard is seeds from non-Compton cultivars, like Prok, Early Golden, Dollywood, Morris Burton, etc. As we get the breeding program off the ground I will be DNA sequencing everything to verify pedigree.
Nah I hoped he revealed some secrets but I donāt have luck ā¦ If my gueses are right Prok is Piepher x EG or Garretson. Will you publish the sequencing results ?
Yes! All our results will be made publicly available, either in an open-access peer-reviewed journal article, or on our website if the journals donāt think theyāre ābigā enough results.
This is awesome! Really cool to see persimmon breeding move forward!
Some american persimmons never loose astringency even when ripe, but thats more of a thing in wild trees.
I donāt know if this is outside your scope, but if you can, send someone down to Cliff Englandās persimmon tasting on October 14th. He has a huge collection of hybrid and american persimmons. Personally I prefer the americans flavor wise.
Iād love to see you all test the theory of female pollen only making female offspring(or mostly female offspring). Iāve seen a handful of folks mention it but it seems like a difficult and time consuming process to prove.
I am curious what you all are looking for in a silvopasture persimmon cultivar that current cultivars donāt have already. Maybe more of a timber form that makes a ton of fruit? Wouldnāt be good for a market grower but if the fruit is for livestock it doesnt matter how far the fruit has to fall.
Another cool thing that would help get persimmons to more farms in developing cultivars on their own roots. They can be propagated by rootcuttings, and with the right set up and process it could dramatically decrease cost per tree for farmers.
All good points. I concur about wanting to know about āfemaleā pollen and overall what the sex genetics consist of. I also agree that own root persimmons would be a great idea, given that persimmon grafting can be fiddly, especially in cooler areas
In NAFEx discussions on persimmon breeding, 20 years or more ago, the late Lon Rombough was recommending Jim Claypoolās āF-100ā as a better choice for a polygamodioecious male than āSzukisā.
Since you are working with known germplasm, some of my observations may not interest you. On the other hand, thereās a lot of the US with millions of unknown unnamed persimmons, some of which might suit your purposes better than the ones people like.
Watch out for āblueā persimmons that apparently have very high tannins. Years ago an old guy drove me around a relativeās farm to show me the shagbark hickories. There were blue persimmons on a whole lot of trees there. I didnāt try tasting any, they may not have been ready then, or maybe the color made me too nervous. to try. I forget. But now you talk about silvapasture, I wonder. If those persimmons were inedible to cattle, why were there so many trees? We have managed to mostly keep the squirrels away from my lovely long season low tannin grafted tree. But what if a tree had fruit that the squirrels didnāt like, that so they stayed on the tree till dead ripe and then dropped for the deer and varmints to eat and spread the seeds?.
Some 40 years ago I took one of my kids persimmon exploring, and at one tree he picked up a nice plump persimmon and just bit into it . I said, whoa, youād better just take a little nibble, just in case. He said, naw, it smells fine. I was doubtful, but that persimmon proved to be one of the best wild persimmons Iād ever tasted, with a following in the neighborhood. At the next tree, I took my usual nibble and wound up spitting for a long time. He asked why Iād done that, said the fruit smelled terrible, and asked if I couldnāt smell it. Well, I confess I never learned the art of sniffing persimmons for astringency, and have wound up in a place where there just arenāt many persimmon trees to explore. But you all might want to try it and if you canāt tell, bring a kid along.
Also, our southern persimmons grow straight up, and may or may not suit your livestock better. They crop later than EG, which suits me better. And our late wild tree is very welcome at the tail end of the harvest season.
Our goats and dogs and chickens like them all, we have to check on the trees frequently to get the fruit off the ground before they get them. First thing in the morning, while the dogs re sleeping off their night-long work keeping varmints away, thatās a good time to sneak down to get some fruit. The trees are too big now to shake any down.
I know dehydrating unripe Asian persimmon removes astringency (tastes like a date after). Have you tried dehydrating unripe American persimmon? curious if also removes astringency.
When I made fruit leather I had several wild americans in my ripening chamber all at very similar level of ripenessā¦ and I had tested several individuals to confirm no astringency.
I was afraid that one or two astringent fruit might ruin the entire batch.
The fruit leather tasted goodā¦ it was sweet chewey and had some flavorā¦ but the majority of that great wild american flavor was gone. Just sort of a simple candy type flavor remained.
We had lots of dehydrated figs in the fridge tooā¦ and everyone chose them over the persimmon fruit leather.
ā¦ If my gueses are right Prok is Piepher x EG or Garretson. Will you publish the sequencing results ?