Does anyone know of a seed source for the La Primera tropical pumpkin trialled by the Univ. Of FL?  According to my online search, the rights for distribution have not been purchased just yet but who knows if this has changed... The rights of another trialled around the same time were purchased and seeds are available for that one... but as for La Primera??

Does anyone have information on where these CA durians are coming from? I see the seeds are listed as coming from Thai durians but I thought all durians coming into the US were frozen? Although there are rumors I heard a while back that some places in the US are able to get them unfrozen.  I haven't asked the seller personally yet. Can anyone in CA confirm fresh/unfrozen durian can be found in the US mainland?

I did place an order and the durian seeds were already sprouting. Proof they are from fresh fruit. I have a long wait ahead. 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Durian-Thai-3-Fresh-seeds-Super-Sweet-Tasty-/151137591732?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item233080a1b4

Does anyone know off-hand if PRV is transmitted from infected tree to seeds? After being infected, the fruits have become deformed. This is a reliable local strain with purple stems but it is not totally resistant to the disease and I would like to save some seeds if it's not transmitted. The fruit is very large and they are best used for green eating/pickling (brix is a bit on the lower side with orange/light red flesh).

Is it best to start anew? Or are seeds salvageable?

Seedless Cherimoya, the Next Banana?
ScienceDaily (Mar. 15, 2011) — Mark Twain called it "the most delicious fruit known to man." But the cherimoya, or custard apple, and its close relations the sugar apple and soursop, also have lots of big, awkward seeds. Now new research by plant scientists in the United States and Spain could show how to make this and other fruits seedless.
Going seedless could be a big step for the fruit, said Charles Gasser, professor of plant biology at UC Davis.
"This could be the next banana -- it would make it a lot more popular," Gasser said. Bananas in their natural state have up to a hundred seeds; all commercial varieties, of course, are seedless. A paper describing the work is published March 14 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Researchers José Hormaza, Maria Herrero and graduate student Jorge Lora at the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas in Malaga and Zaragoza, Spain, studied the seedless variety of sugar apple. When they looked closely at the fruit, they noticed that the ovules, which would normally form seeds, lacked an outer coat.
They looked similar to the ovules of a mutant of the lab plant Arabidopsis discovered by Gasser's lab at UC Davis in the late 1990s. In Arabidopsis, the defective plants do not make seeds or fruit. But the mutant sugar apple produces full-sized fruit with white, soft flesh without the large, hard seeds.
The Spanish team contacted Gasser, and Lora came from Malaga to work on the project in Gasser's lab. He discovered that the same gene was responsible for uncoated ovules in both the Arabidopsis and sugar apple mutants.
"This is the first characterization of a gene for seedlessness in any crop plant," Gasser said.
Seedless varieties of commercial fruit crops are usually achieved by selective breeding and then propagated vegetatively, for example through cuttings.
Discovery of this new gene could open the way to produce seedless varieties in sugar apple, cherimoya and perhaps other fruit crops.
The discovery also sheds light on the evolution of flowering plants, Gasser said. Cherimoya and sugar apple belong to the magnolid family of plants, which branched off from the other flowering plants quite early in their evolution.
"It's a link all the way back to the beginning of the angiosperms," Gasser said.
The work was funded by grants from the Spanish government, the European Union and the U.S. National Science Foundation.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110314152912.htm

Hi everyone,

     I just wanted to share an interesting observation on a Keitt seedling tree fruit I came across here on the island. As we all know, monoembryonic seeds-- when grown, can take on different characteristics from the original parent. At the mango festival this past weekend, I came across a large, round, dk. green/olive mango weighing over 2 lbs/1 kilo. I thought they were quite unattractive but were practically disease free to their credit. The vendor said she grew the seed herself from a Mexican Keitt and picked the fruits fresh from her tree specifically for the festival. It wasn't ripe at the time of purchase, so I waited....

This morning, I had the Keitt seedling fruit for breakfast. WOOW!    Each bite was full of sweet lemon candy (typical Keitt) balanced nicely by smooth, rich, and delicious coconut. In between the two powerhouse notes, I tasted a playful, rich, fruity flavour that was most intense near the skin and which overtook the sweet lemon candy flavour in intensity. I don't know if this is typical of tree-ripe Keitts, as I've never had a tree-ripened Keitt yet. If this flavour profile is indeed of a typical Keitt, then this seedling fruit did not fall far from the tree.

Most interesting to me was the fruiting season of this seedling. Fruits ready by early/mid June... For a Keitt seedling? Go figure!

Chris