Keeping Citrus Seedless

[Limen]

I am grafting larger Satsuma varieties onto my Tango mandarin and want to make sure the new grafts stay as seedless as possible. Added Okitsu Wase, Miho Wase, and Iveriya Satsuma. Will these Satsuma cross pollinate and get seedy? I can cover this small tree for bees.

Near the mandarin I am topworking a large grapefruit with California Rojo Navel and was thinking about also grafting Shiranui Mandarin on some branches.

Will the California Rojo pollinate the Shiranui and make it seedy? Will the California Rojo also pollinate the Satsumas nearby?

Can't find much concrete information on this and would love input.

[sc4001992]

I have many different varieties grafted on the same tree. Yes, I think the cross pollination will give you a few seeds on the seedless fruits. But I do notice that Seedless Kishu never has any seeds on my tree and it's next to all of my different varieties (12) near it. I also have the Tango on my multi-grafted tree and sometimes it will have a few seeds in some fruits.

[BorisR]

Satsumas are seedless because they have sterile pollen. If pollen from other citrus fruits gets in, they may have seeds. Seedless Kishu is sterile in the female line. No matter how much you pollinate it, there will be no seeds.

[BorisR]

I was wrong. Satsuma has some sterility in both sexes.
link (page 67)
Although I bought satsuma fruits in which quite often (for satsuma) seeds came across. Perhaps there is some variability depending on the variety.

[sc4001992]

I have a question on seedless Tango fruits.

My Tango usually always has no seeds, today when I ate some fruits, I found one seed in the fruit.

Would this seed grow to be a true Tango if I grow it out?

[Seanny]

I had a Bearss seed.
It didn’t sprout.

[pagnr]

"I had a Bearss seed. It didn’t sprout."
If that's a Bearss Lime, if the same as Tahiti Lime, then I have had similar results.
I went thru about 100 fruit fallen of a neighbours tree, got about 10 seed.
A few seed are successful, some never seem to emerge, some weak.
Last year one seed has emerged strongly, then frozen at the cotyledon stage. Its quite thick now about 4 mm, but nothing above the cotyledons.

[sc4001992]

Tango is a good mandarin and I have not seen any seeds in the fruits except for this one fruit.

[Seanny]

Yes is was a rare seed from a seedless Bearss lime fruit.

The point is that it’s difficult to get a seedling from a rare seed from a seedless variety.

Try it and report back?

[sc4001992]

Seanny,

I purchased many store sumo a few years ago, and from the 48 fruits I purchased and ate, there were 5 seeds. I grew the seeds and 3 are still growing well. One seedling is about 4ft tall so I hope it has fruits in a few more years. I also ate a few Golden grapefruits and I grew the seeds (it may not be a seedless fruit) but I have half a dozen seedling trees now.

[pagnr]

"But who needs to grow out a Bearss seed"
I find them interesting to grow, mainly because they throw to lime like or citron like characters, or a mixture.
Also being "limes", fruit should be useable, unlike a dud non sweet mandarin seedling etc.

[Pandan]

I think Ive heard bearss limes are mono-embryonic.  Anyone know if that's true? And are they pollen sterile

[Millet]

Bearss Limes are not pollen sterile, their flowers are complete.  Like many citrus  they are self pollenated.

[sc4001992]

pagnr & seanny, didn't mean to offend you guys trying to grow out Bearss lime seeds. It sounds interesting about the possible hybrid cross you might get.

pagnr, can you take a photo of your seedling when it has leaves, I would like to see what it looks like. Also where are you located, in USA? If you like to grow more seeds, I can look for some when I pick my Bearss lime next time. I don't need so many fruits so most of the time, if I can't give it away then I just cut them in half and squeeze the juice in my sink so I can check for seeds.

[pagnr]

Hi sc4001992, no offence taken whatsoever, same to you, I hope my reply was not abrupt either. I am in Australia, so no seed but thanks.

[Millet]

I'm like sc400.  I used to have a a full grown in ground Bearss lime tree that produced way more limes then I would ever use.  So I cut it down and planted a Valentine Pummelo.  Now, I think the Valentine Pummelo is not all that great either, as it is just all sweet and ZERO acid.

[Melenduwir]

Bearss limes (aka Tahiti limes) are triploid.  When they do form viable seeds, it's almost certainly due to an error in chromosome handling - the same sort of genetic mix-up that created the triploid genome in the first place.  Ironically, it has the potential to restore fertility to the organism that it took it away from.

They are monoembryonic in that case, but it's questionable as to whether they are zygotic - they could be, or the genes could entirely derive from the seed parent.  There's no guarantee what you'd get from a fertile seed - it might be easier just to go back to the parents of the line and work with them.  Key lime was one, and is known for producing diploid gametes more frequently than usual.

[Seanny]

I think Ive heard bearss limes are mono-embryonic.  Anyone know if that's true? And are they pollen sterile

[Seanny]

pagnr & seanny, didn't mean to offend you guys trying to grow out Bearss lime seeds. It sounds interesting about the possible hybrid cross you might get.

I’m not offended.

I’m growing some Sumo seedlings for fun but something ate all tips last night.

[Millet]

Seanny, Thanks for the Citrus Industry post concerning the Bearss Lime flowers are devoid of pollen.  I was wrong in my above post. Learn something every day.

[Melenduwir]

Persian limes are triploid, and as such they can't properly form reproductive cells.

The rare cases of viable seeds in Persians must be examples where the cell made an error in dividing up its chromosomes.  That's what caused the Persian to come into existence (and be sterile) and it's also what can sometimes restore it to fertility.

Since there's an error in segregation, it's hard to say what the result will be.

[pagnr]

It is not really an error that forms a viable gamete or seed, it is the errors that form unviable gametes or seeds.
In that, it is not errors, but the pattern of chromosomes that are distributed into the gametes, that cannot match up to normal pollen or seed from another plant.
The triploid has 3 sets of chromosomes 3N, when they are divided into gametes 1N, the set of chromosomes is most often wrong, and can't match up with another gamete. Only rarely is a correct full set distributed to give viable gametes. Plants can also make viable offspring with 2N, 3N, 4N, possibly more, and possibly 1N, haploid.

There are also rare similar cases where mules ( horse donkey hybrid ) have produced a viable gamete and then a foal.

Tahiti / Persian Lime have been grown out a couple of times from large seed collections from factory lime pulp, and the progeny described.
Will try to find the link to the article.

[Pandan]

Could a persian lime treated in colchine or oryzalin (to double chromosomes) have its fertility restored?

[Melenduwir]

That would produce a hexaploid.  Chromosome duplication in plants tends to produce hardy specimens with exaggerated traits - brighter colors, larger leaves - but eventually the burden of maintaining cells with excessive DNA seems to outweigh any potential benefits.  The point at which polyploidy harms the plant seems to vary by species.  'Elephant garlic' is an artificially-made hexaploid derived from the common leek, and it does flower - but it's not propagated by seeds usually, and I'm not sure precisely why.

It might be worth trying with limes, but even if the hexaploid is fertile, any resulting seeds are likely to behave unpredictably.  Having so many copies of every gene makes anticipating the phenotype of crosses an uncertain art.

[pagnr]

Yes it would seem to even out the N number, not sure if the gametes would be 1N or 2N, which could make the progeny lower ploidy when combined with normal pollen.
On the other hand there has been work on creating Citrus with higher ploidy to produce seedless Citrus varieties from existing varieties.

Alliums can either set seed or top bulbils, i.e. tiny cloves. Garlic bulbils are slow because it can take a few seasons to get a clove size increase to useable size. If you grew Elephant garlic from seed, it could take a while to get cloves back to size.

[Melenduwir]

"Elephant garlic" was actually derived from leeks.  Leeks are normally propagated from seed, although some varieties also form tiny bulbs.  Artificially causing a natural accidental triploid into hexaploid resulted in "elephant garlic", which produces large edible bulbs.