citrus hybrids

Discussion in 'Citrus' started by mikeyinfla, Mar 16, 2009.

  1. mikeyinfla

    mikeyinfla Active Member

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    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.
     
  2. Michael F

    Michael F Paragon of Plants Forums Moderator 10 Years

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    Since most Citrus cultivars are already hybrids, the likelihood of getting another hybrid is very high
     
  3. Millet

    Millet Well-Known Member 10 Years

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    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-)
     
  4. Millet

    Millet Well-Known Member 10 Years

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    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-)
     
  5. mikeyinfla

    mikeyinfla Active Member

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    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
     
  6. mikeyinfla

    mikeyinfla Active Member

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    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.
     
  7. Millet

    Millet Well-Known Member 10 Years

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    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-)
     
  8. mikeyinfla

    mikeyinfla Active Member

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    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
     
  9. mr.shep

    mr.shep Well-Known Member 10 Years

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    "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
     
  10. mikeyinfla

    mikeyinfla Active Member

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    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
     

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  11. mikeyinfla

    mikeyinfla Active Member

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    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
     

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  12. mikeyinfla

    mikeyinfla Active Member

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    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
     
  13. mikeyinfla

    mikeyinfla Active Member

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    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
     

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