The Tropical Fruit Forum

Just for the record, not all U.S.A. cultivars in Australia were imported as seed.  In the 1980s a lot of cultivars were imported as scionwood or grafted trees.  The newer Zill  cultivars were iimported as seed, as I mentioned in a post on page 1 of this thread, and in another comment on another thread .  A lot of Indian cultivars were imported as seed by Mike Rule as well.   It's all bloody hopeless, between nursery operators who either are
horticulturally incompetent, ignorant or fraudulent.  Even if the correctly named cultivars were imported now as scionwood or grafted trees, that would  add another layer of confusion. They would have to have extra labelling, something like "Genuine Pickering " or whatever .   98+% of people wouldn't have a clue about it all, and the evidence is right in front of us that a lot of nurseries couldn't care less, if they can charge top dollar for an in-demand  named tree.  It would be better to have the correctly named cultivars imported, of course.

Anyway, some cultivars  in Australia which were imported as scionwood or grafted trees  :  Haden, Irwin, Carrie, Fairchild, Mallika, Keitt, Kent, Nam Dok Mai #4, Florigon, Manalagi, Early Gold, Graham,Alphonso, Heidi,  Van Dyke,  Zill,  Zillate, Palmer, Osteen,  Parvin, Brooks  (syn. Brooks Late), Valencia Pride, Elephant Tusk  (syn. Nga Chan ),  Saigon, Neelam  .  Some Vietnamese poly cultivars
were imported by the D.P.I. as seed :  Cat Chu, Cat Hoa Loc, Cat Thom, Xoai Buoi, Cat Tuong. 

I've replied to Steely above in a P.M.

Plenty of people in Australia would know what is called the Banana mango here.   I don't know when or where it came from  (Poly, Indochinese type ). There were big trees near where I grew up, (I was born 1955, so it's been here a while.  )      Reliable, disease resistant, little fibre. Sweet, pleasant ,fairly rich flavour.   You'll probably find a reference online to " Banana Ken " mango.  The tree is supposed to be a small-growing form of it.  The fruit of it is very similar to the regular Banana mango.   
 

Nam Dok Mai #4 tree is small. Bears well here.

Well, this Australian just ate a Mallika , grown here and ripened properly. The complexity and layers of flavour .   A better mango than any K.P. that I've ever eaten,i.m.o..  I like K.P. too.  70 years old now, grew up eating different types of mangos, not just K.P.     The tragedy is the DPI breeding program.  I ate several "Yess" mangos over a month ago.  I don't think I've ever eaten a less inspiring mango.  Great colour, keeps well, no doubt bears well, but a complete wash-out flavour-wise, i.m.o.
Rob from Sydney, M4 seedling is in Australia.   We have a couple of trees, but they haven't  flowered for us yet.  I don't know if anyone else has fruited it.   Hopefully the M4 seedling is nucellar.  If it
is a zygotic seedling, it shouldn't be sold as M4, obviously.   Not that any horticultural standards apply in Australia anymore.  The recent  monoembryonic Zill hybrids that you and others are paying big
 money for were grown from imported seed, then trees were grafted using scions from those seedlings.   They shouldn't be sold as named cultivars.    The older Florida cultivars were imported as scionwood or grafted trees. but not the newer Zill hybrids.  I posted more info on this here last year, on another thread.
Re. Mangifera casturi  : Unless space is of no concern,check out if it fruits near Sydney.  We're just west of Innisfail, but at 1,000 metres altitude.   Our Mangifera casturi (grafted on indica ) is v. healthy, over 25 years old, and has never flowered.   Mangifera odorata fruits well every couple of years.

Since I'm in for a  cuppa, I'll add a funny story.  After importing, planting , growing the different cherimoya cultivars, we took one lot of fruit to Rusty's market in Cairns, in an excess of enthusiasm.   We didn't have a regular stall there, and  predictably we didn't sell a lot of Cherimoya fruit, as  no -one knew us , or Cherimoya fruit.  I don't know if the bloke waited until I went away from the stall for a while,, but he gave Jo a  five-minute telling off, accusing us of being liars and frauds, etc, because he was from Europe, knew all about Cherimoyas,  there were no cherimoyas grown in Australia,etc.   So I came back to the stall, Jo was upset about it all, and that was our last trip to Rusty's market.   Bit of a shame in the end. There
were some excellent flavoured fruit among them.

Thanks Mike and fruit nerd.    It's probably not necessary to add this, but Mike means Kamerunga Research Staion. , which was located at Kamerunga.  Kamerunga is a suburb of Cairns.

Gone Troppo,   Sure. I realise that. I'm just giving a bit of information , in case it is of any use. Woopen Creek would be among the highest rainfall areas, which is why I gave that bit of info.

 I should have mentioned Mallika. Ripens pretty late, we ate the last one a few days ago.  Bred in India, but  very clean fruit after all the rain. Fruits moderately most years here. Excellent mango, a different flavour category to other mangos here.  A dwarf tree here as well , as it is in India. Apparently gets a  bit larger tree in some regions.  I gave some fruit to some friends who hadn't grown up with mangos. I warned them that they might find the fruit flavour a bit too rich. They liked them a lot. I was surprised.

It's not a Zill mango, as the seed was collected in Vietnam by David Fairchild, but Fairchild is the most disease resistant for us.  We had over 900 mm rain  in Dec-Jan.   Picked a good crop of Fairchild in Feb.  All ripened without a blemish.  It's  a delicious mango , but small. Fibreless.   Dwarf tree here.  About  2.8 metres  high after about 40 years, never been pruned.     Cat Thom ( Cat means fibreless,  Thom means fragrant ) , also from Vietnam, is almost as disease resistant as Fairchild here.  Excellent mango.  Cat Chu  from Vietnam gets some  marking.  Doesn't bear as well as Fairchild and Cat Thom here.   Cedar Bay  marked badly this year.  Nam Dok Mai  # 4   had clean fruit, and is a small tree too.

Is it possible that some  F. coronata  set parthenocarpically ?   As far as I know, F. coronata is monoecious . We have fruit on now, so when some ripen, I'll plant some seeds ,if there are seeds  . Thanks for the information.

I'll keep that in mind, Epiphyte. No carica wasp here. F.opposita is dioecious. I haven't pollinated figs before, so I'll have to read up about it.  I just noticed that you were the person who posted the list of graft trials, with the coronata with a question mark after it.  Did the graft work, and is it still growing o.k. ?

Thanks for your reply,   Mike T.   I think coronata will probably work, but I haven't tried it yet.   One of the comments above gives a table where they have tried coronata, but the result wassn't known when they posted the comment.  I thought that maybe that person  or someone else might have some definite information.   Re. F. racemosa, I don't see how you can be so certain that it won't work.  As well as the info in the comments above, I have a couple of references here that state that itis used in India .  It is naturally deciduous in some regions
with a more severe dry season than Cairns.  Sure ,it can grow very large, but you need to remember that when you are in the world of rootstocks,and the cultural conditions given to  the species in question, it's a whole other can of worms.  F.racemosa bonsais well.  Potential for container culture in some nematode problem regions ?   How large would the species grow when it's grafted to F. carica ?   Would there be  severe problems with rootstock  overgrowth ?  The fact that F. racemosa has been used as a rootstock in India for so long makes me think that it can't be too problematic. The performance of rootstocks can be surprising.  For example,  Tamarillo here on S. mauritianum grows to about the same size as Tamarillo on it's own roots, with the mauritianum rootstock only slightly overgrowing, with no long-term incompatibility..  Eggplant on S. mauritianum here grows well, yet the plant and rootstock stays small, with little overgrowth.  Anyway, I might try a plant of it as well, so we'll see.   All the best to you.

Jose,  There should be some good books available  there on this topic,giving detailed information.   The best here are those by Kevin Handreck, a CSIRO scientist who did  decades of work on growing media.  A couple of critical points are the air-filled porosity of the mix, and the ratio between organic and inorganic, non-decomposable components.  His books give an explanation of how to test the air-filled porosity.  (It's not difficult. I haven't checked, but there probably are videos available on the procedure ).  For a long- term mix, you need a minimum of 20% . (The air- filled porosity decreases over time,and the rate of decrease is greatly affected by the ratio of organic to  inorganic components. )    Handreck's work showed
that  for a long-term mix, the inorganic components (sand, gravel, scoria, pumice,perlite  ) should be a minimum of 70% of the mix.