Backyard and hobbyist breeders

[Mike T]

So many great fruit types around here seem to have originated from hobbyists and backyard breeders.Chance seedlings and specially bred lines of abius,black sapotes,jackfruit and many others came about this way.Granny smith apples,ellendale mandarins,several passionfruit,sharwill avos,limberlost and johnson durians are examples and many of my rarer fruit trees came from elite backyard accidents or willful breeding.My pineapple brazil guava,ud ambarells, a new canistel and some types already mentioned seem to have such origins and there are many more still in yards awaiting discovery.
I would encourage hobby breeders aspecially with annonas,dragonfruit,jackfruit,papayas and many other types to give seeds a try if you have room.
I bet here are just as many examples in your area and backyard gems waiting to be discovered.Do many forum participants have ambitions of breeding and crossing in their own little patch?

[Sleepdoc]

I may try some Jackfruit crosses in the future.  It's going to be awhile for results .... 8-10 years maybe.

If I get any Chempedak seedlings to survive and fruit, I will also try some specific Chempedak X Jackfruit crosses..

[nullzero]

I have ambitions for some future breeding. I started to collect lots of Opuntia sp. for future breeding and crosses. Some of the things I wanted to breed;

Oxalis tuberosa (Perennial tuber crop)
Opuntia sp. (Prickly pears and nopales)
Ullucus tuberosus (Perennial vegetable, edible leaves and tubers)
Diospyros kaki (A top tier fruit that deserves more breeding focus in the U.S.)
Scorzonera hispanica (Edible roots, leaves, and flowers, flowers smell like sweet vanilla)

[mikesid]

I planning on trying to cross all my annonas and planting them out to see what happens. I think that this is exciting just to see what happens.

[BMc]

My pineapple brazil guava

Mike, do you still have the pics of the fruit/tree that you could post on here. maybe someone here can give it a better ID? Did we last get up to possibly arashum?
Having tasted mikes pineapple guava, i can say it is one of the most amazing small fruits out there. It seriously tastes like pinapple candy, but wont grow from seeds 

[Felipe]

Not really a breeding program, but I'm growing many seedlings and I'm excited about the results, specially concerning 3 green sapotes I have in ground. They came from seeds Oscar send me a few years ago. At the moment I can see, that the three plants have different leave shapes. I wounder what the fruit production and quality will be like one compared to each other.

I future I would like to start small breeding programs with mangos and mamey.. 

[Mike T]

BMc I posted it before with lots and pics but it basically came up empty and in the too hard basket.It seems it is probably a P.guineense that is different from existing cultivars including asuna?Most likely it has crossed with something else but it had the finest local guava minds baffled as well after scrutinising the plant.A cross would explain the small,soft inviable seeds.You'd hock up the the most elite yellow cherry guava in horror if you ate one of these guavas first.

[Tropicalgrower89]

I future I would like to start small breeding programs with mangos and mamey.. 

Same here.    But, it will be hard to do with .16 acres, so I have to plan on how I'm going to breed different varieties. Maybe buy a grafted mango from lowes, transplant it into a large pot, pug it to get several vigorous branches and top work it using budwood from each seedling onto the mature wood of each branch to taste my results sooner.

[fyliu]

I have ambitions for some future breeding. I started to collect lots of Opuntia sp. for future breeding and crosses. Some of the things I wanted to breed;

Null, there's a French guy in north county who went up and down Baja to collect all the opuntia he thought were good and brought them back to grow. He said they don't fruit here like they do in Baja. Much fewer fruits.

[fruitlovers]

I've planted a lot of seedlings through the years hoping to come up with some winners, but most are in fact duds. I guess there's a big element of luck involved, and so far mine has been about the same as when i play the roulette in Vegas. LOL One shining exception has been my purple caimitos. But even there i can't take much credit because the seeds came from a neighbor's tree which already was quite superior in size and taste.
So i've switched to finding the perfect mango for our very wet climate. I'm trialing varieties from Florida, India, Thailand, etc. to try to find the most anthracnose resistant, and hopefully small sized tree, with lots of production.  I have about 50 cultivars planted and from that i hope to pick the top 5 and promote them.
I've done similarly with avocado, rambutan, and lychee, planting a few cultivars for trials, but on a much smaller scale than with mango.

[Jackfruitwhisperer69]

Excellent topic Mike

I'm very much interested in breeding elite varieties and hybrids in the near future. My main interests are Jackfruit, cherimoya, sweetsop, atemoyas, papayas, passionvines...etc for disease resistance, cold tolerance to native condition, high productivity, supreme texture and flavor
I highly recommend fellow members to breed with material that are elite!!! No ass draggers like Mike say's You will have a better chance of also getting elite plant's.

Also to do in the future...Trial named varieties of fruit trees to see if they will adapt to Madeira and of course be very productive and sustainable.

[Tropicdude]

Even though there are many varieties of mangoes , papayas and such, there is still room for improvement,
specially for commercial growers.

Of course productivity, and disease resistance are important , but customers also want taste and looks.

Other important features are shelf life, and recently things like evaporation weight loss, firmness, and the ability to maintain quality after quarantine treatments ( hot water dips , irradiation etc. )

Also changes in cultivation practices has given farmers the desire to have trees ( Mangoes for example ) that are more compact, for high density planting.

At the moment, Papaya farmers need a more resistant variety against PRSV, which is a major problem around the world.  a solution that is not GMO based.  this is where breeders could come in.

I was searching for the perfect commercial mango variety, and the closest I have come across is the Keitt, no surprise here, because this is the variety most farmers have had good success with.

But I feel, that the Keitt has room for improvement, mainly  the fruit needs color, and taste can be improved on also.  while maintaining  all the good characteristics it has already,

Imagine a "Keitt" with the taste of an Edward, and the color of a Tommy Atkins.  its really just not available now.

Avocado is another one that could be improved on.

For the back yard gardener , the needs will vary as much as the grower. obviously a mango with more cold tolerance would be welcome for US growers, Dwarf varieties, and such.

 

[FlyingFoxFruits]

Been breeding atemoyas and annonas.  Others I'd like to try would be Myrciaria, and Eugenias (but seems like a hard road to go down...at least I'm starting somewhat early...hopefully I can live to see more than 2 generations of progeny to sift through.)

I have some atemoyas that may fruit this year for the first time.  They came from 48-26...really hoping for some nice fruits.  Out of the three best looking seedlings I chose, there is one that looks more like cherimoya, one that looks like a perfect mix, and one that looks like sugar apple with fuzzy leaves...so I figure I have a good chance of getting a winner. 

Passion fruits and papayas have go my interest, due to the fast life cycle.

glad u posted this topic.

What I find though, is sometimes an eager growers urge to introduce a selected variety can make for a new cultivar that's not as good as touted to be. 

[fruitlovers]

Even though there are many varieties of mangoes , papayas and such, there is still room for improvement,
specially for commercial growers.

Of course productivity, and disease resistance are important , but customers also want taste and looks.

Other important features are shelf life, and recently things like evaporation weight loss, firmness, and the ability to maintain quality after quarantine treatments ( hot water dips , irradiation etc. )

Also changes in cultivation practices has given farmers the desire to have trees ( Mangoes for example ) that are more compact, for high density planting.

At the moment, Papaya farmers need a more resistant variety against PRSV, which is a major problem around the world.  a solution that is not GMO based.  this is where breeders could come in.

I was searching for the perfect commercial mango variety, and the closest I have come across is the Keitt, no surprise here, because this is the variety most farmers have had good success with.

But I feel, that the Keitt has room for improvement, mainly  the fruit needs color, and taste can be improved on also.  while maintaining  all the good characteristics it has already,

Imagine a "Keitt" with the taste of an Edward, and the color of a Tommy Atkins.  its really just not available now.

Avocado is another one that could be improved on.

For the back yard gardener , the needs will vary as much as the grower. obviously a mango with more cold tolerance would be welcome for US growers, Dwarf varieties, and such.

I've read that non GMO ring spot virus resistant papayas have already been bred. It's really a biotechnology fantasy that genetic modification is the only resource for dealing with big problems.

[nullzero]

I have ambitions for some future breeding. I started to collect lots of Opuntia sp. for future breeding and crosses. Some of the things I wanted to breed;

Null, there's a French guy in north county who went up and down Baja to collect all the opuntia he thought were good and brought them back to grow. He said they don't fruit here like they do in Baja. Much fewer fruits.

A large portion of the Opuntia collection was selected from high productivity large fruit local plants. I drive by many neighborhoods. If I see one that catches my eye, I knock on the door, or collect pads in public access areas. The other pads come from NALPGRU, selections made on productivity, fruit size, and sweetness (NALPGRU is in Parlier, CA).

[FlyingFoxFruits]

keep me posted on your progress Null...you have some cacti I'm going to want..after you pick out your favorites!

I have ambitions for some future breeding. I started to collect lots of Opuntia sp. for future breeding and crosses. Some of the things I wanted to breed;

Null, there's a French guy in north county who went up and down Baja to collect all the opuntia he thought were good and brought them back to grow. He said they don't fruit here like they do in Baja. Much fewer fruits.

A large portion of the Opuntia collection was selected from high productivity large fruit local plants. I drive by many neighborhoods. If I see one that catches my eye, I knock on the door, or collect pads in public access areas. The other pads come from NALPGRU, selections made on productivity, fruit size, and sweetness (NALPGRU is in Parlier, CA).

[MangoFang]

TropicDude - my Keitt CANNOT be improved upon!!!!! (well except maybe it's droopy
growing habit -  ) Awesome complex flavour and texture - beyond belief (to me anyway!)

Again, where these things are grown and all the factors involved in what they are fed, mulching, soil type, watering, humidity, temperatures etc. and on and on - all determine the final product.  That's why i'm at the point where it's tough to generalize about fruit quality as it seems to have such wide variation, both subjectively(personally) and objectively (where they are grown)....

We have this forum and its wonderful diverse experiences of growing this stuff all around the world and the results seem to vary quite a bit....

I'll smooth my back hairs down now....

And just to add my two cents to the actual topic at hand - I may...I say MAY have a "sport" branch (a branch having unique qualities from the mother tree) on my big Manila mango the produced 3 mangos last year 3 weeks after all the others and seemed to reveal a diff. size and quality of fruit - so I'll keep an eye on that development this year.  Unfortunately, I didn't think to plant one of these slightly diff. appearing and tasting mangos last year, being the  that I can be so often.....



GoodBoyFang

[Tropicdude]

TropicDude - my Keitt CANNOT be improved upon!!!!! (well except maybe it's droopy
growing habit -  ) Awesome complex flavour and texture - beyond belief (to me anyway!)

Again, where these things are grown and all the factors involved in what they are fed, mulching, soil type, watering, humidity, temperatures etc. and on and on - all determine the final product.  That's why i'm at the point where it's tough to generalize about fruit quality as it seems to have such wide variation, both subjectively(personally) and objectively (where they are grown)....

We have this forum and its wonderful diverse experiences of growing this stuff all around the world and the results seem to vary quite a bit....

I'll smooth my back hairs down now....

And just to add my two cents to the actual topic at hand - I may...I say MAY have a "sport" branch (a branch having unique qualities from the mother tree) on my big Manila mango the produced 3 mangos last year 3 weeks after all the others and seemed to reveal a diff. size and quality of fruit - so I'll keep an eye on that development this year.  Unfortunately, I didn't think to plant one of these slightly diff. appearing and tasting mangos last year, being the  that I can be so often.....



GoodBoyFang

Back yard growers have a lot more options in mango varieties to choose from, exporters from other countries have a smaller selection.

At the moment Keitt seems to meet with most of the requirements for commercial growers.

* Very productive - although straggly growth habit, markets looking for compact trees.
* Disease resistant
* Very long shelf life
* Good taste - that holds up ok after hot water dips, and refrigeration, this can be improved still.
* Med-Large size - large mangoes fetch more on the market pound per pound
* No/Little Fiber

It lacks a bit in color, which is why varieties like Tommy Atkins are still around

Also what is needed, (commercially ) is an early variety with all the great characteristics of Keitt preferably with some skin color.

Just Imagine the marketability of a mango that Looks like a Tommy, but tastes and has the texture of a Keitt.

There are so many things a backyard grower doesn't have to worry about,  is anyone really concerned about evaporation weight loss of fruits after 2 weeks of storage? or how much the pores open on the skin, during hot water dip treatment?  This is why most imported mangoes taste so lousy compared to one you have growing in your yard.

For a backyard grower, important features that could be improved on would be mangoes with greater cold tolerance, growing habit of tree, and the ability to repel squirrels and racoons  

[mangomandan]

Fangifera,  I've never heard of a sport branch on mango. (Not that that means anything.)

Keep us apprised.

[Tropicdude]

Fangifera,  I've never heard of a sport branch on mango. (Not that that means anything.)

Keep us apprised.

This reminded me of a study done in India regarding differences found in trees of the same clone material,

"It was observed that significant variation exists, among trees of the same clone in an
orchard with respect to fruit shape, size, colour and quality, which is ascribed to bud mutation.
Asexual propagation enables us to preserve the accumulated mutations which would normally
be sieved-out by sexual propagation. Thus, during the course of evolution, number of
mutations accumulated in different clones, might have created polymorphism among the
cultivated ‘Alphonso’ mangoes from different pockets"

Here is the link to full report:
http://www.google.com.do/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&ved=0CFQQFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fetd.uasd.edu%2Fft%2Fth9776.pdf&ei=UvDYT-7SNIzk6QGp0uSSAw&usg=AFQjCNE5tDONQEZ4NB2tWVIHULuR3WHCjw&sig2=gwOtqVUTNGZ_s0nRcoTDqw

edited to add this additional link, here is a pdf titled "Genetics of mango polyembryony" this information could be useful to amateur breeders.

http://www.fshs.org/Proceedings/Password%20Protected/1968%20Vol.%2081/311-318%20(STURROCK).pdf