John , Richard
Thank you very much for the information gentlemen! Have several types now and it looks like my persimmon orchard will expand in the near future.
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Now for a separate chart on taste, etc 
I think Wabash and H55A among others aren’t suppose to be as good but I ended up with wood so I grafted them anyway. Who knows. Sometimes things behave differently in different areas and soils so what the heck.
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Looking forward to it!
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My understanding is that Prok and Korp were seedlings (not sure if OP or controlled crosses) produced at the Geneva USDA experiment station by the then head honcho, George Slate. They were subsequently grown out and selected by John Gordon. I don’t have Korp, and passed on the opportunity to add it to my collection once or twice based on the understanding that Korp is somewhat inferior- smaller fruit, later ripening. If anyone has Korp and can speak to these traits, I’d be interested to know.
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@hobilus is correct that Prok & Korp were bred by Dr. George Slate, IIRC.
Cliff brought Korp scions to the KNGA meeting this spring, and I have grafted it, so I’m several years away from being able to report on fruit size/quality.
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Thank you for the information! I think Improved American Persimmon breeding may be in its infancy stages for now until more is known on what we have to work with. Cliff England is diligently working on several projects like these right now. @39thparallel grows several types of persimmons and has discussed some of the pros and cons with me. Like pears they take a few years to produce but have the added complexity of coming in both male and female types like mulberry. This makes the persimmon breeders double their efforts.
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This is great data. Thanks.
JT-02 is supposed to be extremely hardy but you had severe damage. Similarly, I had nearly complete die-back of the branches on a small 2-yr old tree but the central leader survived. I have to attribute the damage to the mild January followed by -7 F in early Feb. JT-02 seems to leave dormancy and break bud earlier than DV varieties, so maybe that makes it especially vulnerable to warm-cold cycles in winter.
I have no evident damage on a mature Kassandra, though all the shoots that bore fruit last year died. I think that’s just SOP.
I also have no evident damage on 4 DV varieties – Prok, Barbra’s Blush, H63A, Dollywood.
My one unprotected Asian variety – IKKJ – suffered severe damage and all three trees appeared dead but they have sprouted from old wood.
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Zone 6a/6b with winter low at -9F - I have JT-02, 100-46, Barbara’s Blush, Prok, John Rick, Morris Burton, Zima Khurma, Deer Magnet, and a variety called Big DV that I don’t have much information on (I’d love to hear more about it if you do). All varieties were grafted last year or the year before to rootstock obtained last year or that I planted in 2019. I had no damage on any except two Morris Burton grafts died back to the roots. It could have been a coincidence or the variety though. I can keep a closer eye on JT-02 and 100-46 based on where I planted them. They both seemed to leaf out near the same time. 100-46 wants to be very precocious (flowered the year I grafted and again this year on multiple trees).
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Top… my JT02 graft… longest shoot now 42 inches. I will add a cage extension and more wind support soon.
Bottom… Prok… growing strong.
I will be glad when I get to eat some of these.
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This doesn’t bode well for cold hardiness of the 18 M.B. interspecies hybrids at England’s nor Tony’s Nebraska #5.
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Somebody should do some genetic testing on these supposed hybrids. I bet $100 that there’re no kaki genes.
You’re referring to the reported crosses of Morris Burton x Hokkaido. I’ll be $100 that the supposed hybrids contain no Kaki genes. We need some genetic testing.
To my knowledge, the only well-documented (and publicly released) direct crosses of DV x DK are Rossyanka and JT-02. Anything else is wishful thinking.
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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Joe, I know that you have a (purported?) hybrid, Kasandra as well DV and kaki varieties. Do you not see kaki traits or intermediate traits (between virginiana and kaki) in your Kasandra fruit? Curious if you have any good photos that might get at the relative similarities or differences. My list of Kaki traits would include thick skin, a large calyx, large fruit size, less distinctive flavor (since virginiana flavor is unique and fairly consistent across cultivars), and perhaps flattened fruit form (I know that many kakis don’t have this form, but most do in my limited experience. Also some virginiana do have this form, like Mohler, but not many IME). I’m curious to hear you speak to your direct observations.
Also, I’m not genetics whiz, but I think there has been discussion in the past about the relative merits of different types of genetic testing. There seems to be a lot of garbage out there. What @Richard is looking at is purely ploidy, if I’m understanding correctly, and this should be reliable and indicative. Other interpolations of heritability based on markers and such may be less so. Others could speak to this with more depth, but I’ve been struck by the absurdity of genetic test results for friends dogs, for example, I.e. along the lines of a small lap dog being identified as part mastiff. It’s pretty common, it seems. The human testing that is now popular is even worse in some ways since it conflates so many aspects of our intermixing over the millennia. Our categories for ourselves are just not that accurate or sophisticated at the end of the day. They always go back to some aspect of identity, like language, common religion, nation-hood, tribe, etc. Think of even the relatively recent genesis of “English”-ness. You see the mixing of so many different streams- germanic, celtic, Roman- each with their own unique synergies. If gets messy quick.
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@clarkinks
So far I’ve seen 3 partially divergent goals in recent D. virginiana breeding: cold hardiness, fruit size, and fruit quality. In my opinion it is an error for breeding programs to focus on one in spite of the others.
With regards to genomic testing: the polyploid nature of persimmons creates difficult problems which science does not yet have a solution for. There are some published results available but these are wishful thinking at best and par for the course in horticultural science.
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@hobilus –
Kassandra is a reported cross of the hybrid Rossyanka with the Kaki variety Great Wall. I have no reason to doubt the report – Rossyanka seems to cross relatively easily with Kakis.
[My skepticism about England’s 40+ “hybrids” is all about the fact that it was so easy. The two documented F-1 hybrids (Rossyanka and JT-02/Mikkusu) required strenuous effort. Also, the inferred Kaki parent of all of England’s “hybrids” is a mysterious variety named Hokkaido, which almost nobody else owns.]
Kassandra is a little bigger than the typical American variety (maybe 30% bigger than Prok). Generally a little redder too. Skin is thicker than on my Prok (American). The calyx is large and unlike my Prok the fruit does not separate at the calyx even when very ripe – to pick it you have to cut the stem.
Kassandra also responds to ethanol treatment to remove astringency, which no one has reported for Americans.
Here’s a picture of Kassandra. I picked >1000 of these last year so no doubt I have other pictures if you want to see more. @RedSun has also posted very similar pictures.
I also managed to ripen one JT-02 / Mikkusu last year. It is a cross of the DV variety Josephine x the Asian PCNA variety Taishu. JT-02 looks different than Kassandra – like a smaller version of a PCNA Kaki, so it’s flatter than the DV fruit.
FYI Asians and northern DVs share the same ploidy. That’s not to deny Richard’s point, which I think relates to the sheer number of chromosomes.
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That is challenging because we are unable to identify true kaki hybrids versus true American persimmons.
Excellent information thank you for posting that!
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These all sound like affirmations of interspecific hybrid status, no? That calyx, for example, is HUGE, and very uncharacteristic of any virginiana I’ve ever seen. I understand your circumstantial reasoning around the logistics. I’ve wondered at some of this too, but the proof is in the persimmon pudding, no?
I neglected to complete the full train of though, leaving it for inference, but yes the common ploidy between virginiana and kaki would preclude such a test being useful. Instead, I’d think you’d need to look at mitochondrial DNA or other markers that would/could be inferred to designate a common ancestor.
It’s a safe bet because there is no viable test for kaki genes. Further, gene testing is not the approach taken to verify polyploidy hybrids.
Yes, these traits all appear to be confirmation that Kassandra is a hybrid. I have no doubt about that. But note that Kassandra was not the product of a direct cross of DV x DK. It was a cross of DK (Great Wall) x the existing hybrid (F2 Rossyanka male).
The most difficult step in the hybridization process (and subsequent breeding) is the creation of an initial F1 interspecific (DV x DK) cross. As I said, this has been reliably reported only twice – Rosseyanka and JT-02. The vast majority of reported hybrids (including Kassdandra) are descendants of Rossyanka; a few are descendants of JT-02. Except for Cliff’s “hybrids.”
The issue I raise above relates solely to Cliff England’s 40+ (!!!) reported hybrids of various DV names x the supposed Kaki variety Hokkaido. I don’t believe that those can be true F1 interspecific (DV x DK) hybrids. I’ve discussed this ad nauseam in the thread where Richard develops his list of hybrids in the U.S. As circumstantial evidence, it is true that in the past Cliff has described a persimmon variety in his catalogue as a hybrid when it demonstrably is not. But mainly I’m skeptical that Cliff could produce 40+ hybrids within 3-4 years in his outdoor nursery when the rest of the world in half a century or so, much of it in various breeding facilities and laboratories, has produced just two.
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I’ll take an unsafe, long-term bet – no time limit with payoff whenever we have tests to confirm, hybrids or not.