Kathleen: if you reach the point of needing to “shop around” geographically for promising new local wild genetics based on fruit size, appearance, ripening date, etc., you should filter and browse through the Diospyros virginiana observations recorded on iNaturalist.org. There are approximately 30,000 different observations of the species, many located on public lands, and frequently with photos of their fruit (one of the filtering criteria). I have personally looked at about 20,000 of these records over the past few years to identify them to the species level. Here is a link to get you started on the process: Observations · iNaturalist. Ping me with any questions about how to use the site. You do not need to set up an userid to browse, but doing so will allow you to contact the original observer of any particular observation with any questions you may have (taste, astringency, etc.).
We are working on the sex genetics, unfortunately they are not cut-and-dry like I’d hoped. My collaborator told me “this will be such an interesting paper!” and I was like “yes but I wanted EASY not INTERESTING.”
Thanks for the tip! I hadn’t thought of looking at iNaturalist.
yeah, that’s sort of the consensus we’d come to here. in a word, “interesting”. It seems like polyploidy alone would add some measure of complexity. There also is perhaps some epigenetic or modulating component since by many accounts polygamodioecious cultivars like Szukis can be “all male” or “all female” reportedly depending on which branch was grafted. Curious to see what you find out!
Hi all,
Can someone please do a trial to remove the astringentcy out of either American persimmon or Asian persimmon fruits if you have some fruits that are yellow but still rock hard by submerse them in cold water for 3 days. Please change fresh water daily. My grandma did this in Vietnam and its work great. @jrd51 can you try this on your Kassandra fruits. @ramv can you do this on some of your astringent Kaki. This trial data will Help lots
of folks. Thanks a million.
Tony
Cool post. Looking forward to sequence data being available some day. As for brewing/baking I just rinse off drops real good and toss in the deep freeze until i want to pulp out a batch. Makes a decent wine - not nearly as good as blueberries do, but decent. I feed the chickens with the splats. They love them.
To be honest, since you have a bit of institutional backing, I’d focus a bit on dwarfing rootstock and more importantly trying to exert some control over sexual expression. A Japanese group led by a scientist named Akagi has shown that sexual expression in diospyros is controlled both genetically through the OGI and MeGi genes and epigenetically through methylation of those genes. The epigenetic component helps explain why we see plasticity in sexual expression on some cultivars - especially since persimmon is polyploid. The cool thing is that gene cascade is modulated by ethylene and offers the potential to artificially induce changes if ethylene inhibitors are judiciously applied to developing flower buds - like the cannabis breeders do. If you can figure that out, you would be able to select for fruiting characteristics of both parents - plus all offspring will be female. It would be like living two lifetimes from a breeding perspective in terms of enhanced selection and productivity. I was going to mess around a bit with that this year but life got in the way.
That said I remember Don Compton claiming he had one he calls Sugar Hill where Miller is the pollen donor - the only legit cross I’ve heard of between two females that didn’t involve pollen from the Early Golden clan or a kaki/hybrid. I’ve got a dozen or so seedlings going where I crossed EG pollen with Ruby (my two favorite persimmons) and Muscatatuck as well. Not sure where I’ll find the space to grow them out yet. 
All the best in your efforts. Wish you success. And look forward to reading about your accomplishments.
Tony – I’ll give it a try.
Update: Here’re the most yellow fruits I could find. Are these OK or do you want me to wait until they are more completely yellow? These are hard of course.
Viewers can judge size – it’s an egg carton.
Looks great. Yours even more yellow than the ones in those tubs. Can you take string and tie to 2 of the fruits and take a needle and poke about 5 times evenly around the bottom large end of the fruit. My aunt said this works real well to let the tanin leaks out. At least we have two experiments in the same batch. @jrd51
Thanks
Tony
I’ll do this as well with my varieties at the right time.
Hi Trev
Can you collect some of your American persimmon fruits and do the water submerse from above to see if it works? @TNHunter
Thanks
Tony
This morning I marked three of the seven fruits by clipping the petals of the calyx. I also made 5 pinholes in the base of each of these three fruits. Then I placed all seven in a bowl of water and placed there bowl in a fridge.
Now I just have to remember to change the water!
Edit: One water change completed 10/03.
Edit: Another water change completed 10/04.
Edit: A third water change completed10/05.
Now it’s 10/06. @tonyOmahaz5 You want me to eat them and report?
My Asian and most hybrid persimmons usually ripen in November. I’ll try the experiment then.
Kathleen, glad to see your post and an update on where the persimmon program is currently.
There are a few threads I’d recommend reading through if you haven’t yet, and there is a lot of information and a bit of unnecessary side banter in some of the tangents. Importantly, you’ll find information about your questions on PCNA chances, polygamodioecious parents (thanks @Lucky_P for reminding me about that term), and astringency loss.
Short answer I can think of for seedless fruit would be selecting both northern and southern trees and having future growers go with whichever is not present in their location, assuming cold hardiness is not an issue. As you will find, there are a few of us working on cold hardy PCNA breeding projects.
The most important thing with persimmons, as I’ve come to learn about farming and fruit growing in general, is that you don’t know what you don’t know. I’m confident in the hundreds of hours I’ve spent learning about them that I’ve only scratched the surface and there are many people on this forum (and the various nut growers associations) who know more than I ever will and that much knowledge will be lost as the older generations pass. The recent interest in this fruit in the past couple years on this forum has led to some very worthwhile discussion and I would hate for you to reinvent the wheel on topics already covered. I wish you luck and please continue to update us and ask for help!
Viable sequencing of non-diploid plants is in its infancy. There are researchers who claim to have polyploid “tools” but to date these are wishful thinking. The persimmon investigator with the most experience is from the Midwest and working with Hudson-Alpha.
Thanks so much for the links! I will keep you all updated as I go and I’m sure I will have many more questions.
I did my graduate work in tetraploid sour cherry genetics, so I’m well-acquainted with the challenges of analyzing sequence data from polyploids. Fortunately a there’s been a TON of progress in the bioinformatics software space for polyploids over the last 5-10 years, and there’s been a lot of progress with genome assembly techniques as well. We are collaborating with Hudson Alpha on both the American persimmon genome and on working out the genetics of sex in American persimmon.
I have examined the mathematics and read some of the codes. Given the data one can obtain from sequencers, at best we can only obtain an underdetermined system of Diophantine equations. I look forward to new hardware paradigms to tackle this remote sensing problem.
Nice article. In 2022, my wife and I were in Arrow Rock, Missouri during thier fall festival. We walked by a persimmon tree, loaded with fruit and had to try some. They were delicious, so we carried about 20 home, ate them and put the seeds in the refer. I now have 10 trees planted out in tree tubes that have come thrugh this summer in very good shape. Wish all my young fruit trees did as well as these persimmons.
We only have one other persimmon tree growing on our 25 acres and it is a young, skinny 18 foot tall sapling. I was able to taste one fruit from it last week and it was good. Mid-Missouri zone 6b.
Results are in for Kasandra – negative. I poked holes, as instructed, in 3 of the 7 fruits. Then I soaked the persimmons in the refrigerator for 4 days, changing the water three times. Nevertheless, after the treatment the fruit were still very astringent. And I couldn’t see a difference between the fruits with holes (left, with trimmed calyx) and those without (right).
My wife saw me eating a piece, so she took a bite. Two minutes later she was running to the bathroom to brush her teeth.
Thanks for doing the trial. Hybrid persimmons is a no go for this method. I will try the PCA Hachiya next month to see if it works.
Tony