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Cold Hardy Citrus / Re: Stingerless bees for pollinations
« on: March 05, 2024, 12:03:14 PM »
But bees don't keep records of their pollinations.
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Yeah, cold hardy citrus breeding is no walk in the park.
Again, one of the biggest roadblocks is high rates of nucellar seed. What probably needs to happen at some point is someone needs to make a dedicated effort to breed zygotic seed into cold hardy citrus.
To do that, you'd want to take a bunch of fully zygotic varieties like Meyer lemon, ichang papeda, one of the more cold hardy pomelos, rough Seville orange or some other zygotic sour orange, then some combination of (1) breed then with each other, using ichang papeda as your main source of cold hardiness and then screen your F2 generation for hardiness (2) cross them with the handful of zygotic poncirus hybrids (eg the SuperSour series of rootstocks) and again screen for cold hardiness in the F2 generation, (3) find out which fairly cold hardy hybrids have one fully zygotic patent, ichang lemon for example, and cross it with your zygotic varieties, then screen the F1 generation for zygotic seed, and (4) cross them or some of your good F1s and F2s with the nucellar but very hardy hybrids and varieties like 5*, Dunstan, Changsha, then backcross those F1s with your fully zygotic plants again so that hopefully you'll have some fully zygotic F2s.
Lots of options, but none of them would get you results in a single generation. You'd probably need another two generations to then select for the best cold hardiness. That's at least a lifetime of breeding work. However, were someone to do this, it would make cold hardy citrus breeding much, much easier. And if you went for an four options, and were sure to include a wide variety of sources of zygotic seed (lemon, pomelos, sour orange) you'd end up with a lot of genetic diversity to work with to get the fruit quality you'd need for something not just edible, but good.
8B is probably one of the better zones for attempting a project like this.
Nothing against what was said above, if you want that much genetic variation in your population. But there are already 4 mostly zygotic mandarin x Ponciris hybrids in use. US 1279, 1281 and 1282 are more than 95% zygotic, and 852 is about 85% zygotic. And Kumin has some F2 citranges that have survived 4 (or is it 5 now?)zone 6 winters. And he has collected some citrimelos and such to bring into his population. I think he is closer to success and will have an easier time than is being talked of here.
I am trying about the same way but I'm way behind him, in spite of his sharing his stock with me. We are both in zone 6, but our climate and soil are different, and our time and space are different.
Also I am also working toward a hardy finger lime. I didn't know that Australian citrus don't cross well with Ponciris. However, at least one finger lime x Ponciris exists in Florida. They aren't sharing it. At least not with me.
I hope my saying this keeps others from trying to breed hardier citrus, and trying different methods, and working toward different goal. I have been in touch with someone in Tennessee zone 7, working on hardier kumquats via kumquat x Ponciris. I think he will be successful in a few generations.
I wish success to all of us. And have fun!
With grapes pollen it needs dried out and stored in a freezer to last a year. Even then it's not as good as fresh and after a year goes down to barely viable at all. Fridge helps some. Room temperature won't stay viable for too long. Maybe a few months.
What about sun dragon? 1/8 poncirus and good fruit without off flavors.