Dragonfruit grafting update

[echinopora]

I've grafted a number of dragonfruit since last February.  Mostly interested in shortening time to fruiting so I can do crosses and get the results a little sooner.
This first one is a flower bud from a 4 inch juvenile scion in well under a year.



This is a yellow on white grafted late last feb, young graft photo in march and older graft and flower buds today



Last ones here are some grafts done last april and the resulting buds and flowers this morning.










So overall seems like it would be useful for shortening the generation times between crosses, to allow quicker variety development.

Merry Christmas

Rob

[Mike T]

They only take a year from cuttings.Mine are cropping again now that the monsoon has started.

I left the stump of a removed tree for dragonfruit.


This is a Colombia red and a red cross yellow intertwining with an ilama in the foreground.

[echinopora]

Its not so much the cuttings I am interested in grafting, but seedling crosses. The older grafts are from finger sized cuttings that were practice before my seedlings were big enough to try. In my climate cuttings from last year are just topping the trellis now, but that first one is a seedling fruiting in the same time. If you can go from crossing 2 varieties to offspring fruit in a year or so, you can speed up development of new varieties, select for desirable traits. Its like using fruit flies in genetics labs instead of elephants.  Probably totally useless if you want to grow named cultivars, but could be handy for breeding since you could graft a dozen crosses onto an existing vine, taste the fruit in a year, lop off all the grafts, keep the good ones to grow as cuttings for further evaluation, trash the bad ones and then graft back on a new generation of seedling crosses. That way one trellis coulf pump out a dozen new crosses every year. It might take hundreds of crosses to produce something that is actually better, might as well stack the odds in your favor.

Rob

[simon_grow]

That is very cool, I tried my hand at grafting DF several years ago but failed, can you give me any tips? Over here in San Diego, it takes seedlings 2-3 years to fruit DF from seed so this technique can save me a lot of time. I have 4 different varieties of Jumbo S/H Megalanthus and I would love to get them to fruit sooner.

I'm specifically interested in what season you grafted, how you wrapped your grafts and what needs to make contact. Does the flesh from the scion have to make contact with the flesh of the rootstock or is it the layer directly beneath the skin as with Mango and other trees? Thanks in advance!

Simon

[echinopora]

We are having a big storm here today but I will take some pictures when the weather gets better. All you have to do is line up the vascular ring in the middle of the stem and get good contact. The only thing that will get you is that they are real slimey and slippery and they shrink in the first few days so you need to bind them tight enough to keep them in contact but not so tight that they tear. Season does not seem to matter, as long as the both the rootstock and scion are unhardened new growth. I use extra sticky waterproof surgical tape from 3M to hold them together and haven't fount wrapping the scion all that necessary.

[Mike T]

Seedlungs can fruit fast.I had some from Oscar that a friend fruited in less than 2 years. The weather is inclement here also.

[Kada]

Sorry meant to post in dragon fruit thread

[Ethan]

Nice job Echinopora! I believe you can graft them on opuntia too, that might speed them up even more?