Author Topic: Meiwa scion died to graft point  (Read 707 times)

vnomonee

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Meiwa scion died to graft point
« on: February 26, 2023, 01:17:41 PM »
My 3 year old Meiwa started browning and died back to the graft. Never exposed to cold and over wintered in my grow tent since I had it.

Scratching the bark reveals a brown ring at the graft point. The rootstock used is a type of mandarin.

Is this rootstock incompatible? The rootstock looks fine and was pushing buds on the trunk but I rubbed those off before the meiwa totally died back.















drymifolia

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Re: Meiwa scion died to graft point
« Reply #1 on: February 26, 2023, 01:25:47 PM »
I'm definitely no expert on citrus graft compatibility, but my understanding is pretty much all citrus are pretty compatible, so it seems unlikely to be a compatibility issue, maybe some kind of fungal or bacterial pathogen that the rootstock is more resistant to?

vnomonee

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Re: Meiwa scion died to graft point
« Reply #2 on: February 26, 2023, 01:40:10 PM »
That's also a possibility

Luckily I grafted a piece to citrumelo but I am also reading that it's not compatible with Meiwa. Same growing conditions but no sign of fungal or bacterial infection. I did actually find a field report about meiwa on citrumelo which died after 5 years so not sure on this as a rootstock either

Meiwa on citrumelo



pagnr

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Re: Meiwa scion died to graft point
« Reply #3 on: February 26, 2023, 02:09:17 PM »
I have had similar problems with Fortunella Kumquats. I bought a Meiwa, the grafted section died revealing a Sweet Orange rootstock that resprouted and took off.
I budded both Calamondin and Fortunella hindsii to Swingle Citrumelo. Both went ok for about 5 years. There were a few of each and they all started fading off about the same time. Others from the same budsticks on other rootstocks didn't die off.

vnomonee

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Re: Meiwa scion died to graft point
« Reply #4 on: February 26, 2023, 02:26:53 PM »
Interesting! So I am thinking now to graft poncirus on the citrumelo and attach it to the meiwa, eventually cut the citrumelo graft part off and leave the poncirus as the interstock just so I don't have to start over and because the citrumelo grows more vigorously than poncirus I'd prefer to keep it

poncirsguy

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Re: Meiwa scion died to graft point
« Reply #5 on: February 26, 2023, 07:13:31 PM »
The Meiwa  kumquat is incompatible to most rootstocks.  Meiwa does well on Flying dragon, Poncirus trifoliata, K x R, and Benton citrange.
https://docslib.org/doc/9023092/observations-on-the-compatibility-growth-and-cropping-of-calamondin-meiwa-and-nagami-kumquat-on-several-rootstock
My  Meiwa kumquat was grafted to Kuharske citrange.  I had to run a Flying dragon next to it and graft the Meiwa to FD.  After the graft took, I removed the Kuharske trunk.

vnomonee

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Re: Meiwa scion died to graft point
« Reply #6 on: February 26, 2023, 07:36:45 PM »
Thanks poncirus guy. My other plant from that nursery came with gummosis.

So I will defintely be changing the rootstock over to poncirus since that is what I have.


What do you think I can graft on the SCS rootstock? It's a type of sour mandarin.
« Last Edit: March 03, 2023, 03:37:56 PM by vnomonee »

poncirsguy

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Re: Meiwa scion died to graft point
« Reply #7 on: February 26, 2023, 09:30:12 PM »
I do not know about sour mandarin an compatibility.  I don't think kumquats would graft to sour mandarins

caladri

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Re: Meiwa scion died to graft point
« Reply #8 on: February 27, 2023, 01:22:22 AM »
https://journals.flvc.org/fshs/article/download/86329/83245 OBSERVATIONS ON THE COMPATIBILITY, GROWTH, AND CROPPING OF CALAMONDIN, ‘MEIWA’ AND ‘NAGAMI’ KUMQUAT ON SEVERAL ROOTSTOCKS

This is a paper which includes some details on graft compatibility of kumquats as scion. I really recommend using Google Scholar to look for compatibility matrices. There's a lot of low-hanging publication fruit out there if someone wrote some natural language processing bots to scrape new publications of compatibility data and provide meta-analyses on a regular basis. Heck, even just a hand-edited website which combines published data and makes it available in an easy-to-digest form would be lovely.

https://ucanr.edu/sites/ucceventura/files/57694.pdf More generally, this is a good at-a-glance reference which I think matches the the Citrus Production Manual, but I don't know what edition, and I'm too lazy to go find my copy to confirm that memory. I dunno, you can see why Japanese citrus horticultural tradition is to always use Poncirus as rootstock: great compatibility and results with everything but lemons! (And I think there's options to use interstems if you do want to grow lemon on Poncirus, but that's not something I bother to remember.)

Also worth noting that some graft problems are common, but survive long enough for industry purposes, though the commonest set of those I'm familiar with is with mandarins as the scion. You get 15 years out of a tree, and then you're done. So nurseries may be selling grafted trees with industry-standard combinations which don't match the expectations of home growers, but do match good horticultural practice. In other cases, simple ignorance rules, where small producers simply don't know that compatibility issues are a concern, and just graft everything on C-35 because that's what they think is a "good" rootstock.