on getting hybrids whats the percentage chance of getting a hybrid resulting from cross pollinating a citrus. from what i have seen on here is that most citrus is polyembryonic even though it may also have a hybrid embryo its just that the polyembryonic embryo is just stronger and will outgrow the hybrid embryo. so if someone wanted to get a hybrid is there a citrus that could be used as a mother plant that is less likely to have a stronger poly embryo and the hybrid embryo would be stronger.as a home gardener i just may not have the resources to even try. i thought it would be neet to see what would happen if i crossed a pomelo with a lime i have no clue what the lime variety is. the shap of the fruit looks like a finger lime on the outside but thats where the similarity ends the skinn and the looks of the inside would say keylime it has the smaller pulp like a key lime tastes and smells identical but it is oval, most of the finger lime pictures i have seen show the pulp to be fairly large for the size of the fruit. all i have are a few small air layers so not sure when i will get any fruit so cannot show any pictures of the fruit one of them does have a few blooms but not sure if it will fruit this year or not. i had wanted to use some of the pollen from one of the blooms and pollinate a pomelo while it still has some blooms but if the percentage chance is one in a milllion than not sure it would be worth it. would still be neat to have a oval pomelo doubt the genetics would show up that way but would still be neat.
Since most Citrus cultivars are already hybrids, the likelihood of getting another hybrid is very high
Michael F, actually the odds of producing a hybrid, by cross pollination in citrus is almost ZERO ! To obtain a hybrid, one needs to have knowledge of the VERY FEW varieties that will produce a viable zygote embryo. F1 almost completely does not apply to citrus. - Millet-(1,405-)
Clementine, Pummelo (Not pomelo), Temple Orange, Meyer Lemon, King Mandarin are to my knowledge the only citrus that are monoembronic, thus by pollinating them one could obtain a hybrid seed. NOTE: only the seed would, of course, would be hybrid. After pollination one would have to wait 8-10 months for the fruit to mature. After the fruit matures, the seed would need to be extracted and planted. After the hybrid seed germinated, it would take, in most cases, 8 to 15 years (if planted outside in a warm location like Florida) for the hybrid tree to mature and thus begin to produce fruit. The chance of obtaining a hybrid from all of the other hundreds of citrus varieties would be slim indeed. Lastly, normally a majority, but not all, of hybrid fruits that obtained usually turn out to be of inferior quality. - Millet (1,405-)
cool that lets me know it is slightly possible to cross the red pommelo not sure of the variety and the lime ty . might be worth a shot to try to get the cross if all works well in 6 to 20 years i will let ya know the results
i just did the pollinating of one pommelo it was not fun trying to get a flower that had not already pollinated itself they seem to pollinate before it even fully opens. but did find one and cut all the pollen rods off and than pollinated with the little bit of oval lime pollen that was left not much was left on the one flower if i would have done it yesterday there where three blooms open on the lime. in the off chance it sets a fruit i will plant the seeds hopefully next year there will be allot more blooms on the oval lime so i can experiment better. there are more blooms started on the lime not many but might give me another chance if the pommelo has any left by than.
Now you need to carefully cover the Pummelo bloom with a small paper bag, to prevent the bloom from being accidentally pollinated by another flower wind, bee, ant, etc.). You can remove the bag after the bloom has set a small fruitlet. The red Pummelo varieties name is called Chandler. - Millet (1,405-)
i did not think to cover the bloom. i read the putting the bag over it later and by than figured if it was gonna get some of its own pollen it was already done. it is making a small fruit and seems to be holding so if it goes to maturity than i will just have to plant all the seeds and just keep the ones that look like they are different than the pummelo parent, with being some sort of lime as the father the seedlings should look very different from a pummelo. next year i will remember to cover the bloom when i pollinate it. unless i get a whole bunch of seedlings that look for sure to be hybrid. i am hoping with it having lime as the father it may speed up the time till its first bloom. i am finally getting some blooms on a few of the citrus up front i have the wekiwa tangelo and it has a few small fruit on it i may next year try to cross it with the oval lime also. my key lime had seemed like 100 blooms but lost all of them in the last freeze we had so no fruit on it again this year.the pommelo that i pollinated is in a pot it was an air layer and has not had to much ill affect from being in a 7 gal pot i will only let it hold up to 5 fruit it is prob big enough to keep more but its the only pommelo i had that will even flower and hold fruit.i wish i had more property to experiment with more of the fruiting plants i have and some ornamentals. i still have 13 seedlings from a possible cross of gefner atemoya x red sugar apple. i say possible cause i never even thought about baging it after crossing it. i need to cut some bags and make smaller paper bags for covering blooms so there is not so much weight on the bloom branch. ty for the help millet with the names of citrus i can use as mother plants to try and get a hybrid
"Since most Citrus cultivars are already hybrids, the likelihood of getting another hybrid is very high" In fairness to Michael, this perception is held true by a number of people. Especially in the intellectual community that are not wanting to go back in and determine for sure if the cultivar is a genetic hybrid. In several plants we assume that a hybrid plant that is not quite the same as the parent is a hybrid of that parent. In instances this is true as the phenotypes from what we see of them are not the same. Is much like comparing a West Coast Lisbon Lemon to an Italian Lisbon Lemon. There are Lemon characteristics that appear quite similar but there are also some characteristics that are not the same as well such as rind color, amount of albedo inside the fruit, the sugar to acid balance, shapes of the fruit in the collar region and the basal ends of the fruit. Even some proposed Navels are not a true Navel even though what we see may look like a Navel characteristic on the bottom end of the fruit but is not a “real” Navel when we open up the fruit and separate it into segments. Much like me comparing a Parent Washington Navel to a Cara Cara Navel when I open and separate the two fruit. We call the Cara Cara a Navel but it is not a true Navel to some of us. Even when the Cara Cara came from a Navel parent line we can see indications in the fruit that lead us to believe that this cultivar, although thought of as being a Navel (has to be to some people) but to me might not be a true Navel either as the Navel characteristic in the interior of the basal end is more like a Sweet Orange than it is to an old line Navel Orange. There has been a problem for many years in that prominent people that knew Pummelos did not consider the Pomelo at all and yet there were some noted Citrus researchers that felt the Pomelo and Pummelos were similar yet vastly different as well. We can go back in and read the Hilgardia articles that Snickles in the Citrus Growers Forum posted a link to which University libraries have these articles on hand but Jim in that forum cannot force people to ever find and read those articles. If we go back in time, we see people like Walton B. Sinclair and others working with Pomelo as parent rootstocks for Oranges and today some of us that knew some of that research cannot mention Pomelo any more without undue criticism all because others like Robert Hodgson yielded to outside pressure and lumped the Pomelo and the suspected Pummelo (phenotypic, not necessarily genetic hybrids) as all being Pummelo. The problem is that some of us still have or have access to some of the old Pomelo that was worked on at both the Riverside Experimental Station as well as at Lindcove. Some of the wood from those trees and whole trees were sent to a couple of now defunct (no longer existing) Florida experimental stations and one in Texas (Kingsville) years ago and today “no one” knows much to anything of those works and; by the way, most people from the "outside" were not supposed to know much to anything of those research works to begin with! Most of the Citrus research was compiled but was not always officially published for the rest of the world to see and know about. Even today we have information that may have been worked and gathered on by an experimental station years ago that is completely unknown to the current day researchers working at the same experimental station years later. Enough of that. Red Pummelo, what is needed from my viewpoint is to know how long you have had this plant, who did it come from and what was the plant called by those people that had it in Florida and what was it called when it came into Florida. The Chandler Pummelo should never be called Red Pummelo at any time. The old Siamese Red was the Red Pomelo. Now how do you plan to convince me that your tree is the old Red Pomelo plant that I know of and have worked with in the past? Then again what you may perceive as being the Red, to me may be the Siamese Pink or a variant form of it. Here is a little something you did not know and others are not acquainted with either; what parent rootstock caused the Pink Pomelo to change and why the resultant progeny grown from seed from this Pink Pomelo scion x___ rootstock marriage yielded Pomelo fruit yet when seed was grown from this fruit was not the same as the Pink Pomelo and was later called a Pummelo. The Pummelo were all considered to be hybrids which indeed coincides with Michaels sentiment. He is correct but are all phenotypic hybrids true genetic hybrids as well and the answer is no they are not. A phenotypic hybrid can be cross pollinated onto another Citrus, which is the foundation for why we can "breed" and have bred these trees by asexual means. Does not matter then or makes a whole lot of difference in practical application if the embryos are monoembryonic or polyembryonic. King Mandarin has a counterpart and it is the King Tangor. So does the Temple Orange and it is the Temple Tangor. Why is the King Mandarin a better pollen or seed parent than the King Tangor and the Temple Orange a better parent than the Temple Tangor? The reason is that both the Mandarin and the Orange have "mixed" genomes already, whereas the two Tangors may not be. Mixed meaning they are not a true Mandarin but more so a created one, nor is the Temple a true Orange. The genomes of the Tangors were muddied up by the rootstock parents used in both cases. The resultant Mandarin and Orange cultivars were selected out from these Tangor x rootstock unions. They were selected out as being variant form, phenotypic hybrids and these are the ones that seem to work best for cross pollination than a pure line plant will be for most studies. Parent line Lemons will not cross too well with parent line Limes and they in theory should be easy to cross. Cross breed either a Lime or a Lemon with a Limetta and we can expect some individuals that are different than either parent [but how many individuals are different enough either at first or later on that should be considered a true genetic hybrid as opposed to being a phenotypic hybrid?]. Yes, you can breed a finger type Lime with a Red or Pink Pummelo and in time, may take many years to see the results you want as you will have to wait to have the progeny seedlings on their own roots to set fruit to see if you can change the shapes of the Lime and the Pummelo. You can over time do it but it is so much easier and quicker to use the approach mentioned by Snickles in the Citrus Growers Forum and do it by asexual propagation to achieve results quicker and perhaps see these desired results in your lifetime. A faster way still is do protoplast fusion as presented in the Genetic Improvement of Crops book right in a petri dish or in solution in a test tube and use tissue culture techniques and grow those trees on and hope that you get an oval Pummelo that will stay true then. Just because you may get a handful of oval Pummelo fruit does not mean they will in turn pass that characteristic on into their progeny is what you have to be mindful of. A phenotypic trait does not always translate into a genotypic trait that is immediately passed on from plant to plant, progeny to progeny, year after year. An added note: this is why it was so tough and took so long to grow a white Marigold that yielded white progeny from seed. It took a while for this recessive trait to enter into the genome of the plant and render youngsters all of the same color for many years. Even when a Marigold may look white to us in phenotype, it may still be yellow in genotype is what the main problem issue was for Marigold and other plants to a host of color breeders for a long time. Jim
i am just a hobby gardener not really looking to name or comercialize any citrus just wanted to try it to see what happens. i do have an experiment going where i grafted a seedling piece to an adult the branch i grafted it to was about 6 feet tall so all the energy went into the sedling piece after i cut the pummelo branch off and grafted a lime about 1 foot above the side vaneer graft when the seedling piece got 3 feet tall i took the top off and regrafted it to itself lower down about 6 inches abovethe original graft than cut everything off above the new graft and that is now 3 feet tall again so it was 2 feet when i got the seedling and it has grown 3 feet twice so its basically 8 feet tall as far as node count is concerned i just cut the other branches off the pummelo accept for one that has a piece of the oval lime grafted to it so that branch was also about 7 or 8 feet tall so now all that energy should be pushed into the seedling piece and the lime so thats about the only experiments i have done to see if it will produce allot faster i top worked the original seedling with a var. pink lemon so cannot find out if the seedling or the grafting experiment produces first. and not even sure what the seedling was it was the neibors fathers plant i got it after he passed so have no way to know what seed he planted and from what citrus. the leaves do smell a little bit like lemon but so do several of the tangelo leaves i have smelled here is a few pics where my pinky is was the first graft site and the other finger is the second graft site
with the last cold weather we had. the pommelo droped all the fruit accept the one i pollinated. it did loose a few leaves too now it is in growth mode again and some of the new growth has small blooms developing on it so in a few weeks it will have more blooms i wish the oval lime had done the same thing so i could pollinate one and make sure to bag it. i did just notice this morning that a seedling lime berry [TRIPHASIA TRIFOLIA] is in bloom i wonder if it would cross with the pommelo probably not closs enough in relation for crossing. the bloom looks a little different than most citrus blooms heres a pic of the bloom on the lime berry that may be a cross i will save for when my poncirus trifolate starts to bloom in another 6 years or so no rime or reason just curiosity. i may try and see if the lime berry is even graft compatable with any other citrus if not than that would rule out crossing it with anything. the pummelo x oval lime cross the fruit is about the size of a gum ball so hopefully there will be a few of the seeds that will be a hybrid and viable this fruit wants to stay on besides the cold we had it has been a chore to keep all my plants watered especially the poted ones and i got home one afternoon and the tree was wilted and the fruit had shriveled i watered it and have been keepinga better eye on it and this one fruit is still holding it plumped back up and has continued growing so hopefully that did not disturbed the seeds being viable. i need to clear out some of the plants i can so i can get this one in the ground just tough to figure out what i can live withought i grow allot of tropical fruits and some i just have never tried yet they are seedlings so donot want to pull them up until they have fruited and i know if i want to keep it or not. and not sure why but the neibors will not let me plant stuff in there yard lol
i just transplanted the limeberry and noticed the date i planted the seeds was 10-18-04 so it took about 4 1/2 years to start flowering probably would have been sooner but it has been in the same pot the whole time but still was not rootbound and the blooms scent is not really as plesant as most citrus
well the last fruit fell off so for this year this experiment is over still need to figure out if i am gonna try and find a spot to plant it or transplant it into a bigger pot
