TC'd Jaboticaba

[Hobo62288]

Ive been searching and can not find any information on Jaboticaba's grown from tissue culture.  My main question is do they fruit?  If so, is it any quicker than a seedling?  I don't know much about tissue culture except how some figs grown from TC haven't fruited or took a very long time compared to cuttings.  I've seen post talking about how much many of you love Jabo's and figured someone would possible know something.  Any info is appreciated. 

[Hobo62288]

Is there anyone some you may know who I could contact that may have info?

[fyliu]

I couldn't figure it out and thought TC meant "thread crapping" in forum speak, haha.

Anyway, tissue culture reduces the whole plant to a few cells to start a new plant. This is essentially turning back the clock to start from seed. Except you know what the fruit will taste like later on.

So the time to fruit would be similar to growing from seed. There are always exceptions to this rule so specifying your target plant will help others provide better advice.

Seeds have the advantage of a built-in food source, so seedling might actually mature sooner.

[Hobo62288]

It's Jaboticaba.  Myrciaria cauliflora

[fyliu]

Oops, I should learn to read.

Hope the jaboticaba experts can chime in on this. I only have general conceptual knowledge about tissue culture. Never done it before because I'm afraid of contamination risks. Bacteria and fungi are the rulers of the microscopic world.

[fruitlovers]

Don't know of anyone who tissue cultrues jaboticaba, so it may be a moot point, but i think they would be even slower to fruit from TC than from seed.

[FlyingFoxFruits]

Don't know of anyone who tissue cultrues jaboticaba, so it may be a moot point, but i think they would be even slower to fruit from TC than from seed.

I have tissue cultured Red Jaboticabas for sale, they cost about $5-$8 ea, depending on how many you purchase!  Prices are subject to change.

they are still small, approx 6 inch tall, but healthy and ready to ship!

sorry I have not tried to grow tissue cultured plants out to fruition, but so far they are comparable to seedlings...just a little slower during the initial phase of juvenility.

also sorry I don't have much info on the process of tissue culturing these plants.  From what I can gather, it can be somewhat challenging.

[huertasurbanas]

wow Adam: that's interesting, I would like to do that with some rare species I have now, very far from fruiting (so I dont have seeds now to reproduce them)

[kh0110]

Don't know of anyone who tissue cultrues jaboticaba, so it may be a moot point, but i think they would be even slower to fruit from TC than from seed.

I think most of us here assume the same thing, incorrectly, me included. So, I checked some literature on the subject and here's what I found in one of the books, "Plants from Test Tubes: An Introduction to Micropropogation, 4th Edition" by Holly Scoggins, Mark Bridgen:

When new material is started in culture, grown in vitro (literally, “in glass”), it develops very small juvenile shoots, which are reminiscent of seedlings. A plantlet continues to produce and maintain small stems and leaves throughout its duration in culture. This is fortunate because most mature material would be too unwieldy for micropropagation to succeed in a test tube (Figure 1-2). After multiplication in culture and when transferred to soil outside the laboratory, the plantlets will produce leaves of normal size and assume the mature features of the plants from which they originated.

[mushroombob]

I have done tissue culture on many plants and it can be challenging. With some plants it does not make sense to do unless you have a specific need (slow to propagate by other methods, etc) but it can be a way to very quickly get more plants than you know what to do with, if you are not equipped to take them all the way back into dirt it won't matter

in my experience with papaya, once we had plants in the field they actually fruited more quickly and much lower to the ground than our seed grown plants.

But as has been said, every plant is different