Some are big persimmons , if not from Kaki where would the large size come from? Are there some Improved Americans that are very large through selective breeding? It takes many years to develop fruit. My small crabapple took about 15 years to determine it was a good apple and not just a decent apple. There are many good rejects. One of my apples was good but died of fireblight the 2nd or 3rd year producing. Any apple can get fireblight but it is not right to not properly test stuff for at least 5 years. @Lucky_P and other fruit pioneers in NAFEX as i noted above were growing some of these persimmon nearly 20 years ago and discussing them at that time. Rushing these fruits to market is not the way to improve things. We do need some genetic testing done and slow painful trial and error. My goal was never to sell the clarks crabapple it was to strictly make the world a better place. I will never except money from the apple project because that was never my goal. Persimmons need someone similarly motivated. We need 100 of us to start doing the hard work of large scale breeding to improve the persimmons. It is a big commitment to devote a couple of acres to grow out thousands of seedling persimmons for 10+ years. In the past Tony and I have experimented with grafting mulberry, che etc.Che, mulberry, osage orange, fig grafting. He is like me dedicated to pushing the limits of what we do. In my retirement hopefully i will have plenty of time to do things to improve the world for those coming after us.
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