So are there definitely no dwarf durian varieties?
If not, could a seedling durian be kept at ~ 10 feet and still fruit?
Assuming this is an idea to do inside a greenhouse, anything is possible with enough $$$. If I was to try, I would try air pots, and maybe a single or double graft to reduce my work and increase the likelihood of success. Then after 1 year, and seeing the investment, I would either
a.) eat frozen durian
b.) save my money and every few years fly to somewhere and eat until I had enough, and still save on the labor and heartache.
Perhaps eventually a seedling at 10’ could fruit but I imagine it would be very long haul. The durian doesn’t need height per se to fruit. But it does need development and constantly cutting it back is going to cause delay to development. Durian seedlings are naturally forest trees that want to grow to 100’ in their ideal environment.
Peter
We had a speaker here recently (maybe 3 years ago),
and I don't want to quote them because its just from memory, not from notes or videos (and reviewing their presentation, I see no mention). They said that cutting back a durian tree, keeping it well pruned, caused it to fruit in 8 years instead of 10. I don't know from experience, so I have no hat in this game. I am going to try it, but I won't remember to report back in 8 years...
Hopefully Mike T will chime in again on this one. I recall Mike's buddy Peter Saleras in Aus showed durian fruiting on his special trellis system and as I recall they were relatively small trees. I don't know if they were 10' in the pics but probably not much bigger -- Mike would be the one for more details. But as Peter (from Costa Rica) & others have pointed out, most want to be big trees so it will take some work to maintain them that small.
John
Yea. Here is the slides from the presentation
http://www.hawaiitropicalfruitgrowers.org/conferences/2017/2017_Peter_Salleras_Fruit_Forest_Overview.pdf