Is every MONOEMBRYONIC Mango seed going to produce something fairly "unique"?

[nighthawk0911@yahoo.com]

If you were to plant a 1000 MONOEMBRYONIC mango seeds of the same variety would each seed produce something that tasted unique & had major or slightly different characteristics...........or would a large number of them be essentially indistinguishable from the parent without genetic DNA testing? 

[Squam256]

Each would be genetically unique as the embryos would all be from sexual reproduction. There would be considerable variation in terms of similarity to parent(s).

[nighthawk0911@yahoo.com]

I know most monoembryonic seedlings will be inferior to the parent, but do they generally produce something still tasty?

[simon_grow]

To add to what Squam256 said, even with sexual reproduction, you can get Fruit that is similar if you planted 1000 Kent seeds for example. It depends on the variety, the grove and many other factors. In a grove of Kent, for example, they are likely to have hundreds of the same variety planted in blocks. Many of the resulting seedlings will be selfed, in which case there is still a recombination of the genes but in the case of the selfed seedlings, you are inbreeding and setting specific traits.

If you keep planting these selfed seedlings generation after generation, you will have set so many traits that the resulting seedlings can be very similar to each other.

If you’re a backyard grower or even if you’re in a grove with multiple varieties, the fruit may have been set with pollen from any of the trees and there is a bigger gene pool and with sexual reproduction, you will be increasing genetic diversity instead decreasing it with the other case.

I believe what you really want to know is how best to plant Monoembryonic seedlings.

I’m definitely no Mango expert but I do have some knowledge about Mangos and also some background in genetics so I would recommend planting Monoembryonic seeds that are already highly selected for multiple generations with set traits that you are looking for.

For example, if you are looking to grow a new variety of mango that has that Caribbean spice flavor, you may want to plant a Carrie seedling because it is a seedling of Sophie Fry which was a seedling of Julie. It has been selected for at least three generations and although I have never tasted Sophie Fry, I know that all the other offspring and grandchildren of Julie have that Caribbean flavor. Graham and Dward Hawaiian are also descendants of Julie.

I know you are not talking about Polyembryonic varieties but I would like to mention also that you can get a sexually reproduced zygote from a Polyembryonic Mango. I have a few experimental trees in which I planted polyembryonic seeds and only a single seedling came up. I have no idea wether the seedling is the clone or produced through sexual reproduction but I’m actually hoping that for these selected seedlings that they were produced through sexual reproduction.

For these seedlings, I know that approximately half it’s genes will for sure be from  the mother plant and the other half is either from itself(selfed) or from a neighboring tree. I try to plant only the top tier varieties so whatever pollinated it, if it isn’t a clone or selfed, should carry with it some genetics that could add some positive attribute to the seedling. With sexual reproduction, you never know and I can just be making the genetics worse but I’m hoping to get lucky.

Just remember that if a variety is highly unselected, it’s genetic diversity will be huge and even if it was selfed, the progeny can be completely different than the parent. Not just the Fruit but growth characteristics of the tree, disease resistance, etc..

Simon