Persimmon sapote hybrid

[Rollip]

Has anyone seen a cross of a commercial persimmon strain with a sapote? It seems like something that might be possible but I've never seen it before.

[Vegan Potato Man]

Sapote can refer to many individual fruits. Do you mean black sapote, diospyros nigra?

[drymifolia]

"commercial persimmon strain" is also ambiguous, because it could mean virginiana or kaki, or one of the few alleged crosses of those.

In any case, there are some major challenges to trying to cross black sapote (D. digyna is the official preferred species name, but the synonym D. nigra is also commonly used) with either virginiana or kaki.

First off, digyna is diploid (30 chromosomes), while virginiana and kaki are either tetraploid or hexaploid depending on specimens. While it's not impossible to cross diploid species with tetraploid or hexaploid species, it's probably going to require a sophisticated lab.

Next, most of the attempts to create a "family tree" for the Diospyros genus have placed digyna in a rather distant branch from kaki and virginiana, so they are pretty far apart despite being in the same genus. Not even the same clade (I'm also pointing out texana here because it's another diploid species that I'm hoping to try to cross with digyna/nigra at some point, as it's at least in the same clade):

[Rollip]

I was thinking kaki, like a chocolate persimmon.
But hadn't realized that sapote were diploids compared to the tetra/hexaploids. So you answered my question since my lab is my garden with a few tiny persimmon trees and I'm not gonna get that fancy.  I'd been looking at what other persimmons I could get that might produce interesting mixes since I'd been trying to make a little entropy and plant trees from seed.

I'd been trying to get some diospyros intricata since it's good in dry climates. But also I don't actually know their ploidy level and wouldn't be surprised if they are diploids based on the geographic closeness to where the sapotes exist, but was having trouble finding the information. That being said it might be interesting if one of those got mixed with a dignya if possible.

Where'd you get that awesome tree with all the data? I'm pretty new to this and trying to find better sources of information.

Thanks!

[drymifolia]

That chart was from this paper, but I'm not sure how accurate it is because it uses some statistical methods on genetic markers that have been discredited recently, so definitely take their phylogenetic trees (which are even internally inconsistent among their different methods) with a grain of salt:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1055790313002777

Most wild species in this genus are diploid, so it will not be easy crossing kaki with anything other than maybe virginiana (which is at least alleged to have been crossed in a number of instances, though I'm not sure that anyone has done genetic analysis to confirm that all the alleged crosses are in fact crosses).

[Rollip]

Probably true about the diploidyness, I'll poke around a bit more and see what I can find.
It's kind of interesting that the intricata fruit morphology looks more persimmony than sapotish to use scientific terms.

[sc4001992]

I have read of someone in SoCal that has successfully grafted black sapote to kaki. I have a large kaki rootstock tree that is a vigorous grower so I will try to graft some black sapote the year and let you see the results when my grafts grow out. I have a friend with a large black sapote tree so I can get my scion wood anytime I have time to do this experiment for you. Also, if it works then I won't need to wait for my seedling black sapote to become a tree and how fruits. My kaki rootstock has been in ground for over 30 years so the graft should get fruits in 2 years.