Again, you’re attacking a straw man. I did not say that the dwarfing was inherited. I agree that a mutation occurred. What I said is that NOW the resulting dwarfing IS inherited.
Similarly, the Japanese NA trait almost certainly results from a mutation in the prior A genome. The mutation happened, but now NA is inherited reliably by PCNA x PCNA crosses.
I get that it can be chaotic but there are regularities that can and do guide our breeding. For example, the Japanese have produced dozens of new PCNA varieties from PCNA parents.
It seems that there is great potential in breeding a new kaki variety.
The difficult crossing of cold hardy persimmon x kaki and embryo rescue is done by Ukrainian.
Growing a few thousand seedlings and we can get a perfect kaki. I think when you get a PCNA variety for cold climate and short/cold summers you have a big business in commercial growing.
The cross at the top (JT-02 x PCNA) is the cross I’m pushing hardest, except that JT-02 is female only. So I’m suggesting JT-02 x Taishu (PCNA with male flowers). I’m expecting the results to be cold hardy (like JT-02) and 5% or so of the offspring should be PCNA. I have no idea whether any offspring will be male.
Once we’ve accomplished that, crossing with an early-ripening, short-season variety would be worth trying.
Honestly, I would be curious if a female tree like JT-02 could be stressed enough to throw a few male flowers. If an all male tree like Cliff’s cold hardy Rossy occasionally throws a female flower, I expect the same could happen in reverse.
I think if We continue to cross JT-02 with any PCNA Gosho male flowers and eventually We will have a decent cold hardy and possibly a PCNA offspring since Taishu is hard to fine.
A little more detail on the heritability of the NA trait. . . .
These researchers made three crosses:
Japanese PCNA (Shinshu) x Japanese PCNA (Taishu).
Japanese PVNA (Kurokuma) x Japanese PCNA (Taishu).
Chinese PCNA (Luao Tian Tian Shi) x Japanese PCNA (Taishu).
So which offspring were reliably non-astringent? See Fig 3.
100% of the J-PCNA x J-PCNA crosses produced fruit with small tannin cells and low soluble tannin, markers for the NA trait.
0% of the J-PVNA x J-PCNA crosses produced fruit with small tannin cells. All produced fruit with large tannin cells. Some, however, had low soluble tannin if the seeds inherited the PV trait and produced ethanol. These results suggest that the J-PCNA trait is recessive. J-PCNA trees must therefore be homozygous for the NA trait.
65% (22 of 34) of the C-PCNA x J-PCNA cross produced fruit with small tannin cells and low soluble tannin. The remainder were astringent. So a cross between these non-astringent varieties produced 35% astringent offspring. These results suggest that the C-PCNA trait is dominant but that C-PCNA trees are heterozygous.
Genetics may be somewhat chaotic, as suggested above, but results such as these reveal some orderliness.
It would be great to get measures of variables such as (a) tannin cell size and (b) amount of soluble tannin in some of the Ukrainian hybrids, especially Gora Roman Kosh
Stan – In the cross of V x K that created Rosseyanka, do we know which was the female? I think the convention is to list the female first, so I assume a Virginiana female. Can you confirm?
<< Rosseyanka originated in 1959 by Pasenkov at the Nikitsky Botanical Garden. He crossed a seedling no.213 of American Persimmon (female) with pollen of Asian Persimmon forms 48 and 145. A hybrid no. 18 has been grown up in vitro (laboratory conditions)and fruited in 1964 for the first time.
It was named “Rosijanka”. >>
I have the hormone “naphthalene acetamide” listed as inducing fruit set on male, normally sterile, and/or hybrid plants. Maybe it would help?
I’ve read somewhere JT-02 threw out a few male flowers noticed by its owner.
