Success from Seed

[Future]

This is an item to discuss what varieties folks were successful in growing from seed, ideally including time to first harvest and how true, or luckily untrue the fruits produced were.

[Tim]

Asian guavas come fairly true to seeds and fruit within two 2years... at least mine did 

[Future]

Which named varieties would that be?  I have an Indian white,l dn't know if that counts...

[Soren]

Generally speaking if a variety is a cross combing desirable characteristics from two different lines you should expect a higher variation in the off-spring than if it is a pure-line itself, where unrepresentative genes for that line has been removed selectively for generations.
Now, I have no idea about the origin of the mentioned guava varieties but guava is not considered to reproduce true to type from seeds, for that you need vegetative propagation, although you can expect many traits of the parent to appear in the seedlings.

[Tim]

Generally speaking if a variety is a cross combing desirable characteristics from two different lines you should expect a higher variation in the off-spring than if it is a pure-line itself, where unrepresentative genes for that line has been removed selectively for generations.
Now, I have no idea about the origin of the mentioned guava varieties but guava is not considered to reproduce true to type from seeds, for that you need vegetative propagation, although you can expect many traits of the parent to appear in the seedlings.

You're probably right, come to think of it, we always eat our guavas green & crunchy.  In that stage, most of them taste very similar to my stunted palettes 

Future -mine isn't a named cultivar, it's a hubrid project someone was trying out.  My father scored some seeds from his trip several years back.

[TriangleJohn]

I have many many trees grown from seed but the only two types that have every fruited are guavas - the large Asian White kind and the small Strawberry Guava. At the Asian market where I buy a lot of my tropical fruit the guavas are rarely marked by variety so I have no idea which one gave me the seeds which now produce fruit every year. I think it took three years for both. Most of my other success with seed stories involve plants that will take way too long to reach maturity - I'm only growing them to see if I can keep them alive through a couple of winters before I spend big money and purchase air layers or grafted specimens.

While focused on tree fruits I completely overlooked smaller crops - namely Lulo and Cocona, along with all the husk tomatoes and Tamarillo. They often take more than a year of care to get big enough to fruit but I'm happy with the crop and the flavor.

[Soren]

I am growing all my trees from seeds, and apart from hybrids and varieties either seedless or with none-viable seeds, most fruits can be grown from seeds with success if you are willing to wait for the first bloom and don't mind variation compared to the parent tree.

[sultry_jasmine_nights]

I am growing a lot of stuff from seed. I just potted up over 50 cacao seedlings the other day. It was more work than I thought it was going to be lol.  There is a farmers market near us with some good Asian sellers there that I can sometimes find tropical fruits from.  Last year they had lychee,  rambutan, guavas and some different vegetables.   I think it is fun to try stuff from seed even though it might not be practical or the best way lol.
I have 3 little African Sausage Trees/Kigelia (ornamentals) that I grew from seed that are going on their 3rd year.  I dig them up and severely prune their roots and even tops every winter then over winter dry in the greenhouse. They completely defoliate and loose their leaf petioles as well but then leaf right back out in the spring.

[fruitlovers]

This is actually a very complicated topic, but to answer as simply as possible:
most really rare species you can't get grafted cultivars of, and you are even very lucky to be able to obtain seed. So obviously with 95%+ of species there's not much choice, you have to go with seeds.
Of the species that have been grown for long time and of which there are select cultivars, often the cultivars were selected 1/2 way around the planet and probably will not do as well at your location. So even there there's room for experimentation with seedlings to come up with cultivars better adjusted to local climates. This applies very well to fruits like rambutans, durians, lychee, etc. But these experiments are usually better done by nurseries or research centers. Unfortunately most usually don't bother, and so burden falls on individual gardeners making that "eureka" find.
If you have a postage stamp yard and only want to grow one mango or avocado i quess you would have to be pretty crazy to grow only one seedling mango, or one seedling avocado.
Oscar

[HMHausman]

I have fruited the following trees from seed....results stated to the right:

Mango......mixed results from poor to pretty good

Carambola.....initially I thought awful, but now seems to be pretty close to parent

Avocado.........very inferior fruit....but with excellent water tolerance

Abiu............never saw the parent so can't say, but I think pretty good

Sugar apple..........pretty good results.

Cacao...good results

jakfruit.....good results

longan.....decent results

papaya......lousy to mediocre

grumichama.......good

ambarella...good

miracle fruit.....good

jaboticaba......good

surinam cherry....not good

Harry

[FloridaGreenMan]

Partial results in Coral Springs

Sugar Apples:  excellent results
Papaya: very good
Soursop:  Awesome results
Cacao: poor results
Cupuassu: poor results
Abiu: Awesome results
Jakfruit: My seedling produced 16 fruits in yr #3 and has 10 more fruits so far this year 
Black Sapote: very good results
Imbu: beautiful tree...no fruit yet


 

[fruitlovers]

I think it's better/quicker to say which plants don't give good results from seed, as most fruit will give good results from seed.
One i have had very poor results with from seed is avocado. This is mostly due to fact that most seedlings succumbed to phytophora root  rot. The ones that didn't succumb the fruit is also mediocre. Only one has really good fruit. So seems like chance of success with avo is low. I'm guessing that monoembryonic mangos would also give poor results, but haven't tried it. Some things ofcourse you plain can't start from seed because they never produce seed, like breadfruit, most bananas, and babaco.
Harry, i don't understand why you had poor results from seed for papayas. All papayas are started from seeds, i'm talking whole plantations here are started from seeds.
Oscar

[Soren]

Apart from the obvious impossibles - avocado and mango are the two I would avoid as the fruits are typically inferior. I even understand from previous discussions that some seedling avocado trees never bear fruit which is a problem I have not encountered in Uganda where 99% of all avocado planted are from seeds.

[fruitlovers]

Apart from the obvious impossibles - avocado and mango are the two I would avoid as the fruits are typically inferior. I even understand from previous discussions that some seedling avocado trees never bear fruit which is a problem I have not encountered in Uganda where 99% of all avocado planted are from seeds.

That's right. I'm the one that brought that up before. One of my seedling avocados has never fruited. Why that would be i don't fully understand? Perhaps some abnormality in the flower pollenization process?
With mango you have the advantage over strictly sexually produced avocado seeds for starting from seed that some mango seeds (SE Asian) are polyembryonic, so you can hypothetically choose offspring from polyembryonic mango seeds that are clonal.
Oscar

[Soren]

Apart from the obvious impossibles - avocado and mango are the two I would avoid as the fruits are typically inferior. I even understand from previous discussions that some seedling avocado trees never bear fruit which is a problem I have not encountered in Uganda where 99% of all avocado planted are from seeds.

That's right. I'm the one that brought that up before. One of my seedling avocados has never fruited. Why that would be i don't fully understand? Perhaps some abnormality in the flower pollenization process?
With mango you have the advantage over strictly sexually produced avocado seeds for starting from seed that some mango seeds (SE Asian) are polyembryonic, so you can hypothetically choose offspring from polyembryonic mango seeds that are clonal.
Oscar

Oscar - I seem to remember the discussion from the yahoo group, but I have heard about this issue elsewhere so it is not a one-time incident?

[HMHausman]

Harry, i don't understand why you had poor results from seed for papayas. All papayas are started from seeds, i'm talking whole plantations here are started from seeds.
Oscar

Of course I am aware that seed propagation is quite common and even the norm for papayas.  I am talking about my own personal experience only and did not mean to imply that this was a universal result in the seed planting world.  In my experience, I have planted out seeds from papayas that I have purchased, and thought were better than most of the other papayas that I have tried locally and the resulting seedlings produced fruit that was, as I said,  "lousy to mediocre."  I wish I could have reported better results and assume that plantations around the world must be starting with better seed choices than I apparently made.  I have fruited two groups of papayas by intentional plantings.  One set was from a red fleshed variety that I tried at Going Bananas and the other from a store bought fruit from the Dominican Republic.  The results were as I stated.  I never got anything with red flesh either.  What did I do wrong? Also, at least once a year,a bird (I  assume) drops seed in my yard somewhere and papaya plants grow on their own without my involvement.  The fruits from each and everyone of these has fit my description....in fact, they are usually at the worse end of the described spectrum.  But, not having had the parent, I really can't comment on those as I did with the plants I purposely cultivated.

Harry

[Future]

Partial results in Coral Springs

Jakfruit: My seedling produced 16 fruits in yr #3 and has 10 more fruits so far this year 

WOW!

[Future]

surinam cherry....not good

Harry

Most of your list is encouraging to me with such stratospheric import requirements.  Surinam cherry is a surprise though.  I guess with so many wild plants across Bermuda, I expect better of it...was the fruit quality low? 

[fruitlovers]

Harry, i don't understand why you had poor results from seed for papayas. All papayas are started from seeds, i'm talking whole plantations here are started from seeds.
Oscar

Of course I am aware that seed propagation is quite common and even the norm for papayas.  I am talking about my own personal experience only and did not mean to imply that this was a universal result in the seed planting world.  In my experience, I have planted out seeds from papayas that I have purchased, and thought were better than most of the other papayas that I have tried locally and the resulting seedlings produced fruit that was, as I said,  "lousy to mediocre."  I wish I could have reported better results and assume that plantations around the world must be starting with better seed choices than I apparently made.  I have fruited two groups of papayas by intentional plantings.  One set was from a red fleshed variety that I tried at Going Bananas and the other from a store bought fruit from the Dominican Republic.  The results were as I stated.  I never got anything with red flesh either.  What did I do wrong? Also, at least once a year,a bird (I  assume) drops seed in my yard somewhere and papaya plants grow on their own without my involvement.  The fruits from each and everyone of these has fit my description....in fact, they are usually at the worse end of the described spectrum.  But, not having had the parent, I really can't comment on those as I did with the plants I purposely cultivated.

Harry

Papaya taste is influenced not only by seed stock you start with but also climate and soil.
Oscar

[HMHausman]

surinam cherry....not good

Harry

Most of your list is encouraging to me with such stratospheric import requirements.  Surinam cherry is a surprise though.  I guess with so many wild plants across Bermuda, I expect better of it...was the fruit quality low?

This was a statistical sample of one tree.  It was a seedling of my Zill Surinam Cherry.  Fruit quality was "not good" as stated.......it reverted to the resinous tasting fruit that surinam cherry haters hate......color was also lighter than the dark color of my parent plant's fruit.

Harry

[Future]

I just planted a bunch of fruit tree seeds.  Atemoyas from Argentina, "custard apple" from Australia and India, Rollinia from both Australia and Soren I Uganda.  Mexican guava.  8 "different" cherimoyas from a member here.  Plus some other things.  Has anyone grown atemoya from seed successfully?

[Mike T]

It is a tough topic alright because it varies between species and even varieties and environmental effects are important for many species.Because poly mangoes dominate so strongly in my area they are routinely planted from seeds and are usually as good as their parents.There are many great avo seedlings around as well but duds as well.Atemoyas,abiu,guava,rollinia and black sapote seem to be partly true from seed with most around or slightly less in quality than the parent and smaller subsets quite a bit worse or better than their parents.Alot depends on if they outcrossed and what with.
Seed planting has returned new and better varieties of black sapotes,atemoyas,mangoes,passionfruit,papaya and several other fruit types locally.

[kh0110]

...Has anyone grown atemoya from seed successfully?

Future, I'll let you know 3 yrs from now! 
I have sprouted some Pink's Mammoth seeds about a month ago.

[luc]

Everything I have ( 300 plus fruits ) is grown from seed , so far of those fruiting I am happy with the taste and that's the most important to me , I don't care if it is a " named cultivar " or not ( some I cannot compare since the seeds were mailed to me )
Even the Surinam cherries are great , you just have to treat them right , full sun and lots of water.
I do have a problem with avocados not or poor fruiting....
Also my Jackfruits are not as good anymore as they used to be , maybe they are missing something...

[Future]

...Has anyone grown atemoya from seed successfully?

Future, I'll let you know 3 yrs from now! 
I have sprouted some Pink's Mammoth seeds about a month ago.

Atemoya fruit that fast?