Citrus > Cold Hardy Citrus

Breeding a blood yuzu

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Rei:
Hi everyone!

Skandiberg mentioned this idea before on the forum, and we talked a bit about the idea over the last few days... I thought it could be interesting to discuss it to find ways to make it happen. This could create a yuzu-like fruit with some interesting flavors, after all!

I'll use R, ŕ and r to represent the different Ruby alleles. R is for shoot pigmentation (and sometimes flowers too), and is the common variant in wild citrus and lemons, among others. It's the most dominant version. ŕ is a mutated version mainly known from blood oranges, and causes fruit pigmentation. It is the second most dominant version. r is the least dominant version, mostly present in cultivated citrus. It is a mutated variant that lost the ability to pigment shoots. I believe some cultivated citrus don't even have Ruby, but I'm not an expert, so I'm just trying to simplify with what I know to make things easier to understand.

The biggest issue in the way of making such a hybrid is that yuzu most likely is homozygous for shoot pigmentation (RR). Thus, a blood orange x yuzu cross would never yield a blood yuzu. So, we'd need to find yuzus or yuzu-adjacent fruits with no shoot pigmentation at all (homozygous for rr).

I've observed shoot pigmentation in sudachi, kabosu, yuzu, yuzandarin and yuzumelo. I haven't been able to determine wether Staruzu25 has pigmented shoots or not yet (my grafts are very small, only one of them is leafing out), but I believe it should have a 50% chance of being heterozygous Rr, same for yuzumelo, meaning it should have pigmented shoots but the possibility to have unpigmented offspring. I think it's fair to assume Yuzandarins and ClemYuz are heterozygous Rr due to them being crosses. I have no idea wether Ichang Lemon has pigmented shoots or not. Hana Yuzus have had fully unpigmented shoots for me, so it's possible they are homozygous for it (rr).
If you have info on shoot pigmentation in Ichang Lemon or any other yuzu-related lineages, please share!

So, from what I've gathered here, to create this blood yuzu Skandiberg is dreaming about, we'd need to cross a blood citrus (I'm mostly thinking of Moro blood orange or Amoa8 tangor, since they are very deeply pigmented, to the point where the skin color can get red) with yuzandarin or clemyuz, or possibly Hana Yuzu, or maybe the citrumelo x yuzu hybrids (50% chance this wouldn't work).
Any seedlings without shoot pigmentation could be kept in hopes that one of them would be yuzu-like in appearance and flavor, with red flesh (although they'll probably just be mandarin-like or orange-like with maybe some yuzu flavors). At least that's the easiest way to do things. If we use yuzus for the F1 cross, we'd be able to get heterozygous Rŕ seedlings, but due to R's dominance, none will have red flesh, and we'll need F2 zygotic seedlings to actually get red-fleshed fruits. This would take a long time, and I think it's not ideal to not have visible traits in the F1 hybrids.

I'm going to pollinate Amoa8 with N30 yuzandarin (thanks Skandiberg!) in hopes of getting something this year. Whenever my Hana Yuzus finally decide to flower, I'm going to attempt a similar cross as well, in hopes they actually don't have any genetics for shoot pigmentation. The resulting fruit would be closer to a yuzu than with a yuzandarin or a clemyuz hybrid, and if Hana Yuzu actually is homozygous rr, we could then backcross it with our rŕ seedlings to get even closer to a yuzu with the F2 plants. Basically creating a "Blood Hana Yuzu", which I'd say is close enough!


Now, I'm done sharing my thoughts on reflexions on this idea! As I've mentioned, if you have any info on shoot pigmentation in yuzu and yuzu-related lineages, please share! It could be useful for similar breeding attempts in the future.

Lauta_hibrid:
Thanks for the information but I don't know why you say so many things if what you want to create is a red fruit Yuzu ... or what were you looking for? Why do you mention the sprouts? If what you are looking for is a blood Yuzu you can cross something blood x Yuzu or citrus ichangensis. Yuzu comes from the crossing of a wild mandarin x citrus ichangensis ... then you can recreate it using Moro x C. ichangensis (but the characteristic aroma could be lost), there is no pure blood mandarin, but there is Amor 8, which has avana x moro mandarin and inherited the ruby ​​gene. In Argentina, the "criolla" mandarin is consumed, or Willow lef mandarin, and avana is a mutated clone of it. When I give Yuzu to someone they think it's a mandarin, because of the similarity of the aroma with Willow lef mandarin, so that would be my best option.  My recommendation would be to use: C. ichangensis x amoa 8 or Yuzu x amoa 8, in this case both have 50% mandarin, it would reinforce the aroma of this without washing. but you should have a large testing since it is rare to correctly inherit that trait. * It is worth noting that I have tried the skin of very ripe Willow leaf mandarin and the skin is not unpleasant, it could be edible ... as it happens with Yuzu, so it could be used as such, without the unpleasant bitter taste of other citrus fruits such as Australian blood limes or bloodlime.

Rei:
Hi,
Maybe I wasn't clear enough when I discussed the shoot coloration?

Anyway, the Ruby variant for fruit pigmentation is recessive to the version with shoot pigmentation. Thus, blood x yuzu or blood x ichangensis would yield a plant with Rŕ alleles... ŕ being recessive to R means the fruits would never be red, only the shoots. ŕŕ F2 seedlings could be selected though, and would be identifiable by unpigmented shoots.

The reason why I'm asking about shoot pigmentation in yuzu-related lineages is to find out which of them would be homozygous rr, and thus could have F1 rŕ offspring if crossed with a blood citrus.

Below would be the results of different crosses (assuming the blood parent is homozygous ŕŕ, which Amoa8 isn't, but maybe Moro is, I'm not sure):
- Blood x ichang papeda = 100% Rŕ (not red)
- Blood x yuzu = 100% Rŕ (not red)
- Blood x pigmented yuzu relative = 100% Rŕ (not red)
- Blood x yuzandarin = 50% Rŕ (not red) or 50% rŕ (red)
- Blood x unpigmented yuzu relative = 100% rŕ (red)

I hope this makes my thought process easier to follow!

David Kipps:
Shoot colorization ?  Are you meaning the reddish/purplish color of very new small tender leaves when a shoot is just starting to grow, but later at full size are changed to a normal green?  Are you saying that that trait is mutually exclusive to the trait of reddish fruit flesh (never both traits on the same plant)?

Rei:
That's how I understand it, yeah.
It's the same genes that color both the fruit and new shoots with anthocyanins. But that gene is mutated and inactive in most oranges, pomelos, etc. The fruit color variant is another mutation that appeared in oranges, but since it's recessive to shoot coloration, it's mutually exclusive.

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