The Tropical Fruit Forum
Citrus => Citrus General Discussion => Topic started by: brian on January 10, 2020, 04:54:41 PM
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The current crop of fruit on one of my Fukushu kumquat trees appears to be entirely seedless. I must have picked ten already, and not a single seed. This is my in-ground fukushu and is 7ft tall with a good amount of fruit that is medium to large sized for kumquats. What could explain this? Lack of pollination? My other Fukushu trees have seeds, though they are in containers. I don't recall if they were outside or inside when they flowered... likely still outside.
This is exciting to me because it means that it should be possible to *always* get a seedless crop if the circumstances are right. And I've been saying for years that seedless Fukushu would be the best citrus around :)
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Brian, I just ate some Fukushu kumquats about 10 minutes ago. All the fruit I ate had two or three seeds. Some citrus varieties, such as clementine are seedless when grown in areas where they cannot be cross pollinated . If a clementine blossom is pollinated by another citrus cultivar than it is seeded. I do not know if the same is true with Fukushu or not.
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Yes this is what I am thinking... I had heard the same but I have no idea how common this seedless/pollination behavior is in the citrus world. Almost all of the other crops have had at least one seed per fruit, sometimes five or more.
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As for the Fukushu kumquat, when I eat the fruit, I generally eat everything, peel pulp and seeds.
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Fukushu blooms throughout the year, so many of those fruits were produces when other citrus where not in bloom.
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I ate a bunch more. Every single one is seedless. I am going to try excluding bees and see if this is repeatable, and if any of the other kumquat varieties can be seedless (aside from Nordmann of course)
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my current crop of Fukushu is seedless again, as is the current Marumi crop. I am really starting to believe these will always be seedless if un pollinated.
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Just like seedless clementine's when they are unpollinated by other citrus varieties.
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I don't think it's overly pedantic to just point out that Fukushu (Changshou) is actually a mandarinequat... https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/hortj/85/2/85_MI-078/_article (https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/hortj/85/2/85_MI-078/_article)
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Wow, that is an interesting read. I've been doing a lot of crosses with HK Kumquat this year.