Studies of Fruiting Mulberries

[Phlogopite]

Siam jumbo has way bigger fruits than Morus nigra anyway

[Richard]

@KS_razerback

the huge fruit

Berry breeders have long known that crossing two individuals from the same species + certain auxins can produce hyper-ploid offspring with significantly larger fruit. There are two downsides:

1. You’re often back to the starting line when it comes to flavor and will need to selectively breed for flavor among the hyperploids.
2. You’d better be an expert in lab safety equipment and procedures. Physical contact (or breathing vapors) with some of these compounds can have poor effects that don’t show up for awhile and then are permanent.

In far less time you could plant an Illinois Everbearing in a luxurious spot and let it grow into a large tree. You would then have plenty to harvest.

[Fusion_power]

Re-directing a bit, I tasted a fruit from White Persian today. It was very sweet with relatively little tartness or other flavor. I’m waiting until a few more ripen to make up my mind whether I like them or not.

[KS_razerback]

Sounds intriguing and concerning to try breeding some hyper-ploid ones, now I want to dig a little deeper into it.

Well, I have some scions of IE and Lawson dawson ready to graft to about a dozen already dug rootstocks. Also have another special wild one I’m wanting to trial that may become something worth having more of around.

[jerry63]

Anyone know if Alba-Rubra can cross with Latifolia? I planted a Kokuso last year and lots of wild Alba-Rubra trees around. Kokuso seeds would be mixed in this case. Kokuso not bearing age yet. Might be interesting seedlings.

[Richard]

@jerry63
Morus latifolia is a synonym of Morus alba.

[DijonG]

If your goal is large fruit and/or cold hardiness, it doesn’t make much sense to use M. nigra anyway. You’d be better off trying to cross a large fruited macroura with any cold hardy species. Which is something I’ve recently started doing. I’m documenting my trials here:

Anybody have any ongoing or successful breeding projects?

Anybody here been experimenting with breeding new varieties of fruits? I’d be super interested to see what you’ve been working on. Something I’ve been doing recently is pollinating the jumbo fruited mulberries with male pollen from various trees. Like so: M. macroura ‘Himalayan FSP’ x M. sp ‘Pithlachocco Two-Spirit Grande’: [IMG_2323] Seeds: [IMG_2309] Just noticed today that six of these seeds have sprouted already!

[Richard]

@DijonG
Congratulations on your sprouts.

[clarkinks]

@Richard

This is an old thread but i added a comment in case anyone searches it in the future

Mulberry self-fertile?

Mulberry are unique in many ways. I grow viable seeds from rubra x alba and i grow many male mulberries. Sometimes male mulberries do produce fruit infrequently. They can gender change. I think what you are saying is that illinois everbearing and most others will produce fruit in the absence of male mulberries which is true. Mulberries do need males to produce seed. That being said the fruit is seedless without a male. Illinois everbearing are appealing because of the fruit size and t…